By Colin McCandless
Contributing Writer
BOSTON – Despite owning a company that now rakes in billions of dollars in annual revenues, Jim Koch, the 75-year-old founder of the Boston Beer Company, aka Sam Adams, is a revolutionary figure in the craft beer industry.
Koch experimented in the craft beer scene before it was even a blip on a Portland hipster’s radar and is often credited with launching the craft beer movement in America. And his bet has paid off big-time: his net worth is currently estimated at $1.4 billion.
Before the craft beer boom
When he left a lucrative career as a management consultant with Boston Consulting Group to start the brewery it was the mid-1980s, back when craft beer barely existed, and you couldn’t find a bourbon barrel coffee stout to save your life.
The American beer landscape looked vastly different back then and choices were severely limited. Most quality beers were imports and the draft taps featured a who’s who of major domestics.
In a 2023 interview with Forbes magazine, Koch reflected on those formative years before anyone was aware that craft beer existed. “In the beginning, our competition was ignorance and apathy,” Koch said. “People didn’t know about good beer and didn’t care and were drinking fizzy yellow beer. As an industry, we all helped educate [the public]. And we all grew.”
Koch, a Cincinnati native who comes from a family of brewmasters dating back to his great-great-grandfather Louis Koch, firmly believed he could create a worthy lager that could compete with the big boys. His discovery of his great-great grandfather’s recipe for Louis Koch Lager in the attic of his family’s Cincinnati home would eventually transform the beer game. He tinkered and tested and ultimately found a winner.
While you hear plenty of anecdotes about corporate behemoths that started out in the founder’s garage, the inception of Boston Beer Company happened in Koch’s kitchen, where he concocted his first batch of Samuel Adams Boston Lager in 1984, based on that old family recipe. The name choice was no accident. Samuel Adams was a Founding Father and patriot of the American Revolution who happened to be a brewer with a family brewing tradition.
Launching the brewery
Now that he had created a beer that met his high standards, the next step was funding his fledgling beer enterprise. No bank in Boston would lend to this unknown homebrewer, so Koch borrowed money from friends and family to get the operation off the ground.
Samuel Adams made its inaugural appearance in Boston establishments on April 15, 1985, debuting at around 35 bars and restaurants, primarily situated in the Back Bay and downtown.
Koch toted the beer himself into area bars. He would later reflect in an interview with the publication Tap Trail that he “was basically a beer-delivery guy coming into the back of a restaurant and getting treated like crap.” However, the lager’s fresh taste and rich flavor drew rave reviews. Distribution quickly spread across Massachusetts and into Connecticut and by year’s end Koch had sold 500 barrels of his new frothy libation.
The accolades came early, with his Boston Lager winning “Best Beer in America” at the Great American Beer Festival in 1985 during its first year of existence. He beat out more than 100 other breweries vying for the coveted title, both large and small. It was evident from the jump that Koch knew and appreciated the art of beermaking.
Growth and expansion
Koch lacked the capital and investors to build out a massive brewery, so he solved the problem initially by contracting out the beermaking to a century-old brewery in Pennsylvania. In 1989, he opened the Samuel Adams Boston Brewery at the former site of the historic Haffenreffer Brewery in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.
And remember the next time you enjoy sipping that decadent bourbon barrel coffee stout, that Boston Beer Company was the first brewer to age beer in bourbon barrels, beginning in the early 90s. And November 21, 1995, marked a watershed moment when Samuel Adams went public on the New York Stock Exchange with the NYSE symbol SAM.
In homage to his father and the Koch family brewing tradition, in 1997 he bought the Cincinnati brewery Hudepohl-Schoenling, the spot where his dad once apprenticed as a brewmaster in the 1940s.
Never one to rest on his laurels, the year 1997 also saw Koch expand outside the beer realm with the introduction of Hardcore Cider. It would later be replaced by Angry Orchard in 2012 due to slumping sales. Twisted Tea Hard Iced Tea hit the market in 2001 as the company continued growing its product line.
He refurbished and expanded the Cincinnati Samuel Adams Brewery in 2005. Koch later purchased a world-class brewery built by Schaefer Brewery in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania in 2008. In 2016, Boston Beer entered the hard seltzer market with Truly Spiked and Sparkling.
He brought the Samuel Adams Cincinnati Taproom to his hometown in 2018, which overlooks the Cincinnati brewery and sports a mural toasting the city’s rich brewing heritage, of which Koch’s family is a part.
Later in 2020, in a fitting nod to his revolutionary beginnings, Boston Beer opened the Samuel Adams Boston Taproom adjacent to the Samuel Adams’ statue in downtown Boston. Always one to push the boundaries, the company established Truly LA, America’s first ever seltzery, in 2022 in response to the surge in popularity of hard seltzer beverages.
Funding the next generation of craft beer businesses
Koch never forgot his roots or the struggles he faced in overcoming the financial hurdles that stood in the way of his own craft brewing ambitions. With that in mind, in 2008 he established a philanthropic initiative called Brewing the American Dream that disburses loans and provides mentorship to help make that path a little smoother for the next generation of craft beer entrepreneurs.
In August 2023, the program announced that it had surpassed $100 million in funding to support small food and beverage businesses nationwide. According to its website, it has also created and retained more than 11,000 jobs through the program. Koch conceded in that same 2023 Forbes interview that it might appear like he is assisting his potential competitors, but he still views himself as a craft brewer in a market dominated by titans such as Anheuser-Busch InBev and Molson Coors. “We’re all trying to compete against the big guys,” he stated.
The same year that Brewing the American Dream launched, Boston Beer Company started a hops sharing program to help other American craft brewers suffering a setback from a worldwide hops shortage.
Craft beer is still alive and well
According to the Brewers Association, the number of operating craft breweries in the U.S. increased to 9,552 in 2022, an all-time high. Coming in at number two on the Brewers Association’s list of Top 50 Craft Brewing Companies in terms of production? None other than Boston Beer. Despite being near the top in overall craft beer production, the company still only claimed one percent of the overall market share in the U.S. beer industry in 2023.
When asked in his Tap Trail interview about the role he feels Sam Adams played in growing the popularity of craft beer, Koch replied, “I can’t tell you it happened quickly. It really took 20-something years. When I started, even the term “craft beer” didn’t exist. We were called micros, and it was this radical idea.”
But as more and more people became educated about quality, flavorful beer, and the ingredients that go into making it, the paradigm ever so gradually began to shift. Attitudes changed.
As Koch would later add, “Once people started drinking Sam Adams—or now, all the craft beers out there—you can’t go back.”
Although the craft beer market is now thriving, Koch told Tap Trail that the increase in competition has had a positive influence on him and motivated Boston Beer to be better and to “continue to raise the quality level and continue to innovate and make new beers.”
We can all raise a glass and toast to that sentiment.
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