The brewery that became Pearl started as the J. B. Behloradsky Brewery in 1881, a poorly run private operation that lasted just two years before an investment group bought it out in 1883 and renamed it the San Antonio Brewing Company. Three years later, they reshuffled to the San Antonio Brewing Association because the previous corporate structure confused city officials and customers alike. The name 'Pearl' came from Germany, where the brew had been called 'Perle.' In 1886, the first bottles and wooden kegs of American Pearl beer rolled out to local tap rooms. Otto Koehler, the brewery's driving force, built his home in the newly opened Laurel Heights neighborhood on a hill that gave him a clear view of the brewery's smokestacks. Legend holds that Koehler could gauge whether his employees were working hard simply by reading the color of the smoke from his porch.

When Otto Koehler died, his wife Emma succeeded him as chief executive -- a remarkable position for a woman in early twentieth-century Texas. Emma proved to be no figurehead. She modernized the original brew house and dramatically increased production capacity by 1916, transforming the San Antonio Brewing Association from a regional competitor into the largest brewery in Texas, surpassing the Lone Star Brewing Company. Under Emma's leadership, Pearl became the beer most widely associated with Texas and the American West. Though the Koehler family never formally owned the brewery, the board, the workers, and the community treated them as the true owners through three generations: Otto, Emma, and then Otto A. Koehler, who had learned the business from his aunt and uncle. The family's name would endure long past the brewery itself -- when Silver Ventures converted the property into the boutique Hotel Emma in 2015, they named it in her honor.

Pearl's most colorful marketing asset was Judge Roy Bean, the self-proclaimed 'Law West of the Pecos' who ran his courtroom out of a tiny post office and saloon in Langtry, Texas. Bean's favorite -- and reportedly only -- beer was Pearl, and the San Antonio Brewing Association milked this connection for decades. In the 1950s, the brewery converted its old horse stables into a hospitality room with a Wild West theme, complete with an exact replica of Bean's Jersey Lilly Saloon. The stables were later renamed the Pearl Corral and decorated with a massive wraparound mural by Southwest artist James Buchanan 'Buck' Winn depicting the history of ranching. The ties to Bean's larger-than-life legacy remained visible at the brewery for nearly a century, right up until the doors closed in 2001.

After 118 years of brewing along the San Antonio River, Pearl closed in 2001 when parent company Pabst moved all production to contract brewers. Silver Ventures Inc. acquired the 22-acre property and began transforming it into something its founders never imagined: a mixed-use urban village within sight of downtown San Antonio's skyline. The 1939 garage became home to the Aveda Institute and a farm-to-table cafe. The Culinary Institute of America opened a full campus in one of the old sheds after a mysterious 2003 fire destroyed the original bottling shop. The Pearl Corral, with its 1894 pediment date still displayed above the entrance, was remodeled into the Pearl Stable event venue. Even the old Can Recycling Center was reskinned as a giant beer can with neon bubbles, housing yoga studios and apartments. A restored 1909 electric locomotive from the Texas Transportation Company -- which had serviced the brewery on a short-line railroad for over a century -- sits on display where it once hauled freight. The brew house itself, stripped back to its natural stone walls with the original San Antonio Brewing Association name restored to its plaque, anchors the complex as its centerpiece.