Sprecher Brewing has new owners.

Randy Sprecher, 73, who pioneered the modern craft beer age in Milwaukee by opening the city's first brewery since Prohibition, has sold Sprecher Brewing to a group of local investors.

Sharad Chadha, former vice president for GE Medical and an executive with Samsung, will become Sprecher Brewing's chief executive officer.

Milwaukee native and entrepreneur Andy Nunemaker will serve as chairman of the board. Pete Skanavis, owner of Homeowners Concept Realtors, will be on the board. Jim Kanter, the former general manager for MillerCoors, will be on the leadership team.

"Nothing is really going to change for our partners and suppliers and things like that," brewery president Jeff Hamilton said Friday.

Hamilton and the current staff will stay with the brewery, 701 W. Glendale Ave., Glendale.

"We're all a bunch of people who are big Sprecher fans," Chadha said.

"We've known Randy Sprecher for 10, 12 years," he added. "He's in his 70s and wanted to retire, and I thought 'Why not?' What better than Sprecher Brewing Company?"

Sprecher Brewing, which opened in 1985, is metro Milwaukee's longest-running craft brewery. Chadha said the new group has plans to make Sprecher a national craft beverage producer.

Randy Sprecher met his business partner, James Bubolz, at Pabst Brewing, and in 1985 the two started Sprecher Brewing, originally located at 730 W. Oregon St., with $40,000 and a hand-built brew kettle.

Sprecher said his military service in Augsburg, Germany, killed his palate for American beers, but not his interest in beer. He came to Milwaukee from California — where he studied fermentation while in graduate school — to work for Pabst.

"I wanted to develop profiles," Sprecher said in an interview five years ago, on the brewery's 30th anniversary. "I wanted to go after European beers. They had the biggest margin and the stuff I like."

In 1989, Sprecher introduced its hugely popular root beer and in 1999, the brewery moved to its current location in Glendale. In 2014, Sprecher Brewery introduced the Traveling Beer Gardens to Milwaukee County Parks, using three reclaimed ambulances and four firetrucks as beer delivery systems.

Sprecher Brewery closed its Walker's Point taproom at 706 S. Fifth St. in August after operating it for just over a year.

For several years, Randy Sprecher has spent half of each year in California. It's thought that he'll maintain his residence in Mequon, Hamilton said.

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Contact Kathy at (414) 224-2974 or kathy.flanigan@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram at @katflanigan.