Johannes Butscher (John Butcher) was born in Volkertshausen, bei Vacha, Thuringen, Prussia. He emigrated to America at age 23 through the port of New Orleans. With him was his father, Caspar and mother, Barbara. They settled in Campbell County Kentucky where Johann met and married Catharina Zolleis. They had five children together.

In the 1850 census John was listed as a stone mason and living with his father and mother in Newport, Kentucky. Some time during the next decade he established a small brewery on Jefferson Street in that city, and in that concern Butscher contentedly practiced his trade for the next several years.  But in 1870 two events occured that greatly altered the trajectory of Butcher's life. On the 18th of June his wife Catharina died. Later that year he was joined in business by George Wiedemann. Wiedemann had a good business sense and the partnership was a fruitful one. Butscher's modest 15-barrel-a-day brewery soon became a large business concern.

Butcher married once more to Maria Reis, with whom another two children were born. On September 24, 1878, at age 54, Butcher retired from the brewery, perhaps because of ill health (He is listed on the 1880 census as having Dropsy and Asthma). On Christmas Day of 1887 Johannes Butscher died, just hours after his 64th birthday. The brewery he founded, now named the George Wiedemann Brewery, would go on to become the largest in Kentucky and a regional powerhouse, surviving both Prohibition and WWII. The brewery was purchased by the G. Heileman Brewery in 1967 and closed in 1973.

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