Boston Beer Company co-founder and chairman Jim Koch grew up in Cincinnati, the descendant of five generations of beer brewers.
When he set off to Harvard, where we would earn three degrees, it was not his goal to follow in their footsteps.
But in the 1980s when, in his view, big beer companies with poor quality beers had taken over the market, Koch saw the need for a small brewer to make a high-quality craft beer.
As Koch's company once again sponsors Oktoberfest Zinzinnati and he prepares to tap a ceremonial keg during the four-day event that kicks off Sept. 16, he told The Enquirer's "That's So Cincinnati" podcast how Samuel Adams was born in his father's Mount Lookout attic.
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It was the early 1980s, perhaps 1983, when he was visiting his parents in Cincinnati and told his dad he planned to leave a lucrative consulting job to start a craft brewery, he recalled. His father had left the beer business long ago as Cincinnati breweries closed up shop, costing him job after job.
"He didn't think making beer was a great career decision for me," Koch said. "I think he told me it was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard come out of my mouth."
Koch made his case, arguing he wasn't going to try and compete with the big beer guys.
Koch wanted to start a small-scale brewery to make small batches of high-quality, handcrafted beer that he would sell for a significant price premium over the mass-produced beers that were popular at the time.
"He kind of came around and he said, 'Well, you know, you're going to need a great beer. You're not going to be able to do this without something really special,''" Koch said.
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The senior Koch guided his son to the attic, where there was a trunk covered in stacks of old car magazines.
It was filled with brew notes from his father's time as a brewmaster and from when he went to brewery school. Underneath was a recipe scrawled in pencil on yellow paper for Louis Koch Lager, which was the flagship beer of Koch's great-great grandfather's St. Louis brewery.
Itwas a rich, flavorful, traditional, German beer that he made from 1860 until 1900.
"That recipe was the magic of Sam Adams," Koch said.
In his kitchen in Boston, where he still lives,Koch made Sam Adams just as the recipe spelled out. No tweaking necessary.
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The Boston Beer Company was born in April of 1985. Six weeks later Samuel Adams Boston Lager was selected as "The Best Beer in America" in the Great American Beer Festival's Consumer Preference Poll. The Boston Lager would go on to win "The Best Beer in America" title the following three years, After that the title was retired for more specific categories.
Koch said he knew: "I've got magic in these bottles."
Today Boston Beer Company has 2,400 employees and sells various beers, hard ciders, and hard seltzers under the Samuel Adams, Twisted Tea, Truly Hard Seltzer, Angry Orchard, Dogfish Head, Angel City, Coney Island and Concrete Beach brand names, doing $2 billion in sales in year.
Open Koch's fridge and it's still Sam Adams you would find there. It's still his favorite.
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