The Bone Haus Brewing name and theme are a nod to the many ossuaries and catacombs, also known as bone houses, we’ve visited across Europe. Those warmly lit chambers contain artistic and stunning displays of skeletal remains of everyone from revered monks to common townsfolk, but those final resting places are hardly final, as they now serve as monuments for inspiration, reflection, and celebration for the living. They can be a reminder to live for today.

 

Our story ties these brushes of the macabre with the history of Arizona, especially in the late 1800s when mining, treasure, and adventure consumed desert life in the Arizona Territory.

We focus on our craft to make the best beers and beverages we can as we explore new bold and adventurous flavors. Our signature beer is our Desert Distortion New England IPA and we craft many varieties of that beer including a blood orange version called Lichii. We are also well known for our Englemann's Prickly Pear Ale which has prickly pear fruit and vanilla flavors and our lightest beer, Carbide Light.

We want to provide a different tasting experience upon every visit, so we’re dedicated to crafting a steady rotation of limited-editions and seasonals in order to round out our offerings and keep our customers guessing. We want to focus on brewing interesting beer (as well as sodas and coffee!) and serving our customers, and we frequently host a fun variety of food trucks and live music when the tap room is open to the public.

Chapter 1

If you’ve been to the Bone Haus brewery and tap room, or if you’ve seen our artwork on cans, then you know that we are very much into our branding.  In creating our brand, we’ve taken inspiration from old world beer history, and combined it with imagery of European catacombs and ossuaries, and the exciting and sometimes macabre legends and myths of the Arizona Territory and the American West.

 

Each new beer we release is named (sometimes loosely) after an historic event from the American West. We’ll get more into each of those names in future episodes, but before we can do that, we have to dig deep into our origin story and introduce the protagonist of the Bone Haus Brand: Hans Von Biermann.

 

In Bone Haus lore, Hans is the alleged nephew of the legendary Lost Dutchman, Jacob Waltz.  The Lost Dutchman is one of the most enduring and intriguing tales in the American West. The legend centers around a fabled gold mine located somewhere in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona, and the mysterious death of the man who claimed to have discovered it. The story dates back to the 19th century, when German immigrant Jacob Waltz supposedly stumbled upon the mine while prospecting in the area. Waltz kept the location of the mine a closely guarded secret, and his death in 1891 only added to the legend's mystique. Since then, countless treasure hunters and adventurers have tried and failed to find the Lost Dutchman's gold, but the mystery of its location and the fate of Jacob Waltz continue to capture the imaginations of people around the world.

 

Among those seeking the mine was Hans Von Biermann, who in the late 1800s received a letter from his uncle, Jacob Waltz, from deep in the Arizona Territory of America asking him to leave his family and brewery in Germany and help him mine a vein of gold he had just discovered in the Superstition Mountains just outside of a small settlement called Phoenix.  Hans decided to pursue the adventure and potential treasures for his family, so he left his homeland and made the journey across the Atlantic, and then across the vast plains of America only to arrive in Phoenix with no trace of his uncle or the mine he claimed to have discovered. 

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Hans was determined to find his uncle and the riches he was promised, so he did the only thing he knew how to do: He brewed beer and opened a tavern called Bone Haus. At this fine establishment on the outskirts of the Wild West, Von Biermann would mine the local patrons for any information leading to the whereabouts of his estranged uncle and the alleged gold mine.  With each new lead, Hans would venture into the Superstition Mountains, and many times he would have a brush with the macabre, the eerie, and the unexplained. He rode the line between life and death, often unsure of what he was witnessing and experiencing. Were his experiences real?  All we know is from what we’ve gleaned from a detailed journal that Hans kept, and as we said before, we celebrate those adventures with each and every beer we brew. 

 

We’ll get into more of Hans’ adventures in upcoming Episodes, so for now just know that his legend and lore inspired all of us today to follow our dreams regardless of obstacles, regardless of opinions, regardless of oppositions … every day, we remember that one day we’ll die.  So every day, we remember to live … Until next week, "Memento Mori".