This week, we've taken you back to the pioneer days of south central Minnesota brewing, covering its days as a town-by-town phenomenon, to its brush with extinction.Tonight, News 12's Ryan Gustafson wraps up our three part series with the story of the one brewery that made it out alive.It was long odds to make it a century and a half in the brewing industry, but since they're here, the August Schell Brewing Company will spend the rest of 2010 celebrating the accomplishment.Ted Marti says, "I don't very often think of what type of an accomplishment that is. Obviously it wasn't all me - to go five generations in the same family - 150 years never closed is pretty remarkable."Ted Marti says, "There aren't many of us left any more."Schell's just so happens to be the second oldest family brewery in the nation. But it took a change in strategy, and a change in demand for the brewery to find its niche in the industry.Doug Hoverman says, "A lot of Americans were traveling overseas and were having German, Czech and English beers and they were interested by the variety of flavors and they came back to the states and wondered why we couldn't have that same sort of variety here."Ted Marti says, "We could see that if we were going to try to make American Lagers or light beers with the Anheuser-Busch's and Miller's and so forth we weren't going to be around very long. So we developed a line of craft beers... really reminiscent of the old German style beers."In 1985, Schell's rolled out a Pilsner and a Weiss beer, and everything really started to click.Things were going so well in fact, they were ironically pulling off business decisions normally reserved for the big corporation.Hoverson says, "In 1969, when Hauenstein closed and the brands were no longer made locally, Grain Belt picked up the Hauenstein products and brought it to Minneapolis. And then about 25-30 years later, a New Ulm brewery buys out... Grain Belt."With the purchase of Grain Belt, Schell's has come into unfamiliar territory - a brewery that reinvented itself with craft beer, now competing in the big time American Lager market. A modern day David and Goliath story."Ted Marti says, "All these massive breweries ended up drifting back and we ended up able to buy them and that allowed Schell's to focus on craft beer and American lager."Schell's currently has an output in the 80 thousand barrel range. 40 different beers are brewed at their New Ulm facility, a third of which are contract brews like the Trader Joe's brands that are sold nationwide.They've developed a flair for making tradition cool; complementing the fact that America's taste for beer is coming full circle.Hoverson says, "There's something special about having the local beer, and I think that we, in that sense, have gotten back to where we were 150 years ago. When one of the ways in which you judged a community was by how flavorful the local beer was."If that's the criteria for evaluating southern Minnesota, I'd say we're doing alright.Ryan Gustafson, News 12.