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.

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