Carl "Charles" Muench was born in Großheubach, Bavaria, the son of a hotel-keeper. He was educated the public schools of his native land and apprenticed in beer making. So competent was Muench in the brewer's art that he rose to foreman in the brewery that was his training grounds. In the late 1840s he emigrated to America, and found a home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he was hired as foreman of the Schlitz Brewery. He stayed there for seven years. On the first day of 1860 Carl Muench married Walburga Clara Mors. "Wallie" was the daughter of a Milwaukee cattle rancher and a fellow Bavarian immigrant. They moved west that year to Appleton to make a brewery and life of their own. Muench purchased the town brewery from Anton Fisher. He replaced the wood brew house with one of brick and added a malt house and beer garden. He ran the brewery until his death at age 51, on May 20th of 1880. Walle was just 37 at this time but she was intimate enough with the brewing business to take it over during her husband's long illness and ultimate death. She ran the brewery until 1899, when it was sold to a group of investors and renamed the Muench branch of the Appleton Brewing Company. The firm continued in this configuration until 1917, when it was renamed the Geo. Walter Brewing Company. The brewery was shut down by National Prohibition on January 16, 1920. It then re-opened in 1933 after repeal as the Appleton Brewing Co. and survives as of this writing on November 20, 2019.

Walburga "Walle" Clara Mors was born in Germany. She came to America with her parents in 1846 when she was just 8 years old. They settled in Milwaukee, where her father had a large cattle ranch. On January 1, 1860, 24-year-old Mors married Carl Muench. Muench had just emigrated from Germany and had months earlier purchased a brewery in Appleton. Their marriage produced five children, three of whom died in infancy.

Carl Muench ran the brewery for 20 years and grew it into a large and profitable business. Upon his death in 1880, Walburga took over the firm and managed it as a sole proprietor with equal success. In 1884 the 48-year-old widow married Matthias Heid, a saloon keeper 22 years her junior Together, they continued the brewery until 1892 when a stock company was formed.

In 1894 the brewery was destroyed by fire and was rebuilt as a state-of-the-art facility. In 1899 the family sold out to a "company of local capitalists" for $38,000. Upon this, the brewery was renamed the Muench Branch of the Appleton Brewing and Malting Company. It continued under this name until 1917, when it was renamed the Geo. Walter Brewing Co. The firm closed due to Prohibition in 1920 but reopened after Repeal as the Appleton Brewing Co., a name it would have until it became Johnny O's, a brewpub, in 2014.

Walburga Mors died on July 3rd, 1921, at the age of 79 years.