In Newport, there were some changes in brewery formation during the 1870s. 

• Butcher & Wiedemann Brewery.  John Butcher entered into a partnership with George Wiedemann in 1870. It replaced the Jefferson Street Brewery. 

• Deppe & Co. The owner of the Newport Brewery, the Constans family, had financial difficulties in 1874. They sold their brewery at auction to John A. Deppe in 1876. It operated until 1879.

• Geo. Wiedemann & Co. In 1878,  After a partnership with Butcher for about eight years, George Wiedemann obtained control of the brewery, and named it after himself.

• Butcher and Schussler Brewery. After Wiedemann severed his partnership in the Butcher and Wiedemann Brewery, Butcher obtained a new partner in 1877. They then acquired Deppe & Co. in 1879, reducing the number of breweries in Newport to two. However, in 1882, Wiedemann acquired this brewery and became the only brewery in Newport.

Due to a significant population difference, it was not surprising that Cincinnati had several times more breweries and much greater beer production than in Northern Kentucky (NKY). In 1872, Cincinnati had 32 breweries and produced 436,483 barrels of beer with an average annual production of 13,640 barrels per brewery. In contrast, NKY had six breweries that produced 35,232 barrels of beer with an average production of only 5,872 barrels of beer for the year. What made the average production per brewery in Cincinnati nearly twice that of Northern Kentucky, in part, was the emergence of major brewers in Cincinnati. By 1877, Christian Moerlein Co. became the largest Cincinnati brewer with a yearly production of 72,588 barrels. The other largest Cincinnati brewers at that time and their annual production were Windisch-Muhlauser with 59,475 barrels, George Weber with 52,894 barrels and John Kauffman with 39,529 barrels. Since there were no brewers in NKY of size similar to the larger ones in Cincinnati during the 1870s, it contributed to a lower production average in NKY.

It was common for the ownership in a brewery to change, sometimes frequently, as it did during the first decade or two of the Bavarian Brewery, and with many other breweries in Northern Kentucky, Cincinnati and throughout the country. A unique characteristic with most breweries before Prohibition is that they were mostly family businesses, with sons or son-in-laws involved in the ownership and operations, or occasionally a wife or daughter. When their were no family connections or heirs to continue the brewing business, the remaining family members usually sold the brewery to other individuals or families.  For a brewery to be sustainable through decades and become a true generational family business, it was essential for a successive generation to continually improve their brewery  operations. It was unusual for this occur for more than a couple generations and especially for a century. However, as will be explored, this became the situation that developed with the Bavarian Brewery, which extended through three generations. ​​

​​In summary. The brewing business in Northern Kentucky (NKY) was much smaller than across the Ohio River in Cincinnati. However, it was nonetheless very competitive both before and after the Civil War. The Queen City, as it has been known, had over six times the population as Covington and Newport, and about three dozen breweries throughout the 1870s. In contrast, the noted NKY cities had about one-half dozen breweries at any one time throughout this period. Even though this resulted in a larger number of breweries per capita in Northern Kentucky than in Cincinnati, the size of the breweries in NKY were smaller. Between the end of the Civil War and around 1880, most of the Northern Kentucky breweries either changed ownerships multiple times, or they operated for only a year or two before going out of business. Becoming a brewer was not an ordained method to obtain wealth. It appears there were more brewers that lost money than made money during the 1870s, especially in Covington. The Bavarian Brewery alone had seven different ownerships over a sixteen year period period beginning after ending of the Civil War. Even though this  brewery was established in Covington possibly as early as 1861 involving Julius Deglow, it was not until 1866 that a brewery operated as the Deglow Brewery on the Lexington Highway (W. Pike St.). This was considered to be the official year for the establishment of what more commonly became known as the Bavarian Brewery, starting in 1870. This renaming appeared to have been connected to some of its workers who had been previously employed at Fortman's Bavarian Brewery in Cincinnati that opened in1848, if not earlier, and closed in 1865. The Bavarian Brewery was also known by the names of its owner(s) or proprietors, but primarily maintained its common name. As examined in the next sections, the rocky beginnings of the Bavarian Brewery would come to an end, and its growth and viability would dramatically improve. This occurred when John Meyer, the sole proprietor of this brewery in 1879, established a partnership with William Riedlin beginning in 1882.