Johann Stephan Becker was born in Baden Germany. His family emigrated to America at age 16 years because of a "hatred of imperialism" and eventually settled in Winona, Minnesota.  The city of Winona at the time had only a few hundred residents but it was growing quickly with immigrants from Germany, Poland and the Slavic countries.

In around 1860 Becker and (Frederick?) Neufer established a small brewery in Sugar Loaf Village, just outside of town. In 1867, 38 year old Becker joined in marriage with 25 year old Katharine Marie Foehr, the only daughter of Lorenz Foehr, the superintendent of the Melms Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Their marriage produced seven children. In around 1874 Becker bought out Neufer's partnership and continued the brewery as sole proprietor. Soon after he began putting his sons, Gustav Lorenz and Albert Ernest, to work in the business.

In 1882 Becker sold a partnership to William Schellhas, a brewer from Michigan. After participating as a partner in the brewery for ten years Schellhas apparently grew restless in his position and in 1890 went out to Utah to scout a new location for a brewery of his own. He chose Ogden, and began to build. The Schellhas brewery in Ogden opened in the Spring of 1891.

In the fall of that year Schellhas, perhaps growing homesick for the bluffs along the Mississippi, made an arrangement with the Becker family in which the Becker Brewery would relocate to Schellhas's facility in Ogden and Schellhas would assume complete control of the brewery in Winona. So it was in the summer of 1892, 63 year old John Becker left his home at Sugar Loaf and moved across the country to a dusty railroad town in Utah.

On June 6th, 1892 the Becker Brewing & Malting Company was established in Ogden with $50,000 in capital stock, of which Johann and Gustav Becker controlled about $15,000. Albert Becker, who had become the superintendent of the West Side Brewery in Chicago, Illinois joined his brothers in Utah the following January and rounded out the management team.  On April 1st 1893 Becker's Bohemian Beer was debuted at saloons throughout the city.

Johann Stephan Becker died on April 21st of 1918 at 90 years of age. The brewery he founded in Winona was put out of business in 1920 by National Prohibition and never returned. Despite strict Utah temperance laws the Becker Brewing & Malting Co. reopened after Prohibition and thrived for another 30 years, closing finally in 1965. Their flagship Becker Beer brand was sold to the Tivoli Brewery in Denver, Colorado which produced it into the mid 1970s.

William C. Schellhas was born in Lapeer County, Michigan. He was the son of Johann A Buerger, a brewery owner, and it was in his father's brewhouse William learned the brewer's art.

When William attained his majority he set out on his own.  He found work in breweries in Chicago and Milwaukee. In the mid 1870s Schellhas traveled west to the Mississippi River town of Winona, Minnesota where he was hired as foreman of Peter Bub's Sugar Loaf Brewery.  By 1891 he had saved enought to purchase a partnership in Johann S. Becker's Brewery of that same town.

At 53 years of age, Johann Becker was growing too old to do the heavy brewery work, and his children were yet too young. But those young sons grew strong, and by 1890 it became apparent to Schellhas that the next generation of Beckers would carry on the family business upon their old man's retirement.

Schellhas looked further west to scout a location for brewery he could call his own. He found such a place in Ogden, Utah. Ogden was a brand new town that was supplied with fresh mountain water from the Ogden Canyon. The town also served nine railroads and had been nicknamed "Junction City" for the connection at Ogden Station of two of the largest of them, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific.  Despite its proximity to the Mormon enclave of Salt Lake, Ogden was generally free of anti-saloon sentiment. In fact the town had a reputation of being a bit lawless.

The Schellhas Brewery was completed in March of 1891 and the first shipments of Rocky Mountain Amber were shipped to Evanston, Wyoming in May of that year. Perhaps it was homesickness for the pine-clad bluffs of the Mississippi, or maybe it was a desire to be nearer to his ailing father (who would die in 1892), but later that year Schellhas made a deal with his former employer, the gist of which was that the Becker Brewery would relocate to the new facility in Ogden and Schellhas would get complete control of the brewery in Winona.

So it was that in the summer of 1891 Schellhas returned to Winona and the Beckers moved west to the dusty frontier town of Ogden. The newly named Schellhas Brewery in Winona picked up right where the Beckers left off, and William ran it until his death of pneumonia at age 52 on the 10th of May, 1907. His sons carried on the brewery until National Prohibition closed it down on January 16, 1920. Schellhas is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Winona, in the shadow of the Sugar Loaf bluff he called home.