The story
History
Early history
The Boston Beer Company was founded in 1984 by James "Jim" Koch and Rhonda Kallman. The initial beer offering was Samuel Adams Boston Lager, a 4.8% abv amber or Vienna lager. Koch, the sixth-generation, first-born son to follow in his family's brewing footsteps, brewed his first batch of the beer in his kitchen, using the original family recipe for Louis Koch Lager. At the time, Koch was working at Boston Consulting Group after receiving BA, MBA and JD degrees from Harvard University. While serving in his role as a manufacturing consultant at BCG, Koch developed a business plan for a locally focused beer company. He invested $100,000 of his own money and raised additional funds from investors, family members, and friends including former classmates and BCG colleagues. The company was organized as a limited liability partnership; most early investors did not have active roles in the company. However, one early investor, John B. Wing, held a board seat until 2002.
Koch named his beer after the Boston patriot Samuel Adams, who fought for American independence, and who also had inherited a brewing tradition from his father. In March 1985, Koch introduced the beer as Samuel Adams Boston Lager, over Patriot's Day weekend which honors the first battle of the American Revolution and today is more widely known for the running of the Boston Marathon. Six weeks later, Samuel Adams was voted "Best Beer in America" at the Great American Beer Festival, in which 93 national and regional beers competed. The beer was first put on tap at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain.
Initially, Koch rented excess capacity and brewed the beer at the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, best known for their Iron City brand of beer. As sales increased Koch developed other contract arrangements at various brewing facilities with excess capacity, ranging from Stroh breweries, Portland's original Blitz-Weinhard brewery (shuttered in 1999), Cincinnati's Hudepohl-Schoenling brewery (eventually purchased by the Boston Beer Company in early 1997), and industry giant SABMiller. The Boston Beer Company also has a small R&D brewery located in Boston (Jamaica Plain), Massachusetts, where public tours and beer tastings are offered. The brewery occupies part of the premises of the old Haffenreffer Brewery.
1990s – present
In 1997, Jim Koch returned to his hometown of Cincinnati to purchase the Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewery, where his father apprenticed in the 1940s. This was also an important step the company took to reduce reliance on contract brewing.
The Boston Beer Company went public, selling shares of Class A Common Stock on the New York Stock Exchange, under the ticker symbol, "SAM". These shares, however, have no voting rights, while the company is controlled through its Class B Common Stock, of which Koch owns 100% of the shares.
Boston Beer launched Hardcore Cider in 1997, and Twisted Tea brand in 2000. In 2007, the Boston Beer Company purchased the former F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Company brewery in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley. The brewery had been owned by Diageo North America, Inc. and used for the production of Smirnoff Ice malt beverages since 2001. By 2012, Samuel Adams was producing two-thirds of all its beer at the Breinigsville facility, and it has increased brewing capacity there. In 2012 Boston Beer Company launched the Angry Orchard hard cider company based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
From 2000 to 2002, the company sponsored a radio show on WNEW-FM in New York called Opie & Anthony. The hosts created a promotion called "Sex for Sam", in which hosts Opie and Anthony encouraged couples to have sex in notable public places in New York City. On August 15, 2002, a Virginia couple was charged with public lewdness after attempting to have sex in a vestibule at St. Patrick's Cathedral; this led to the firing of the radio hosts a week later.
In October 2007, in an incident referred to by The Wall Street Journal as "Sam Adams v. Sam Adams", the Boston Beer Company demanded that control of the domain names "samadamsformayor.com" and "mayorsamadams.com" be turned over to the company. The domains had been purchased by an employee of the Portland, Oregon radio station NewsRadio 1190 KEX for the campaign of Portland mayoral candidate, Sam Adams. In a cease-and-desist letter, the company expressed concern that consumers might confuse the mayoral candidate with their beer. In an interview with the Associated Press the company said it was willing to discuss Adams' use of his name on his Web sites, "probably for the length of the time the election is being held".
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In April 2008, the Boston Beer Company issued its first product recall because of potential defects found in certain 12-US-fluid-ounce (350 ml) glass bottles manufactured by a third-party supplier which, at the time, supplied about a quarter of the bottles the Boston Beer Company used. The Boston Beer Company stated that they believed fewer than 1% of bottles from the supplier could contain small pieces of glass and issued a recall for the safety of consumers. There were no reports of injuries. News of the recall led to shares of the company temporarily dropping by more than 3%.
On July 4, 2013, a video commercial for Sam Adams beer was rolled out on the July 4th holiday that created controversy over an omitted phrase. The manufacturer decided to leave out "endowed by their creator" in its invocation of the Declaration of Independence which outraged critics. But Sam Adams said they were just following trade association rules. The company said in a statement:
"The Beer Institute Advertising Code says, 'Beer advertising and marketing materials should not include religion or religious themes.' We agree with that and try to adhere to these guidelines."
As of 2014, the company had 1,325 employees at its breweries in Boston, Massachusetts; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Breinigsville, Pennsylvania.
In 2018, the company pushed for changes to the definition of "craft brewery" in order to accommodate a continuing shift away from beer-only operations toward other brewed products including ciders.
On May 9, 2019, Boston Beer Company acquired Delaware-based Dogfish Head Brewery for $300 million. As part of the merger, Dogfish Head owner Sam Calagione and his wife, Mariah, became the second largest non-institutional owners of Boston Beer Company.
In 2020, Boston Beer Company invested $85 million in its Cincinnati plant to quadruple its canning capacity of Samuel Adams, Angry Orchard, Twisted Tea, and Truly Hard Seltzer.
2008 Hops shortage
In early 2008, amidst a worldwide shortage of hops—a key ingredient in beer—Boston Beer Company agreed to sell 20,000 pounds of its hops, at cost, to craft brewers throughout the United States. The company selected 108 craft brewers to divide the 20,000 pounds they had spare.
Samuel Adams shared their hops again in June 2012.
From Wikipedia’s article on Boston Beer Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8