With InBev’s acquisition of Anheuser-Busch, the Boston Beer Company has become the largest American independent, publicly-traded, brewing company.

Fortune has an interesting Q&A with Jim Koch, the founder of the Boston Beer Company and Samuel Adams.

Fortune: Meet the new King of Beers

Koch’s brewery might be young in comparison to the large beer conglomerates, but he comes from five generations of brewmasters and conducts serious quality control by tasting every batch of beer bottled. Koch recently spoke to Fortune about the state of the beer industry and Boston Beer’s role in it. Edited excerpts follow.

Fortune: Did you ever you think you’d be the country’s largest independent brewer?

Koch: That’s like being the tallest pygmy. It’s amazing to me that we’ve been able to go from invisible to infinitesimal to today we’ve gotten all the way to tiny. Someday I hope to get all the way to small.

Fortune: What’s it like being an independent company when many breweries are falling under the umbrella of giant beer companies?

Koch: We can do interesting beers that these huge global brewing conglomerates are too big to be interested in. We make one beer that we sell 10,000 bottles of. It allows us to do the things that come out of an abiding interest and love of beer.

Perhaps more interesting is the Flash application that accompanies the article. It is a gallery of 99 American beers and shows those that are owned by Anheuser-Busch, InBev, Heineken, MillerCoors, and those that are no longer brewed. There’s also a timeline showing the changing marketshare of the big American brewers.

99 bottles of beer on the wall

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