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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Boston Beer Company is voluntarily recalling some of their Samuel Adams 12-ounce bottles, due to a defect that may result in small bits of glass in the bottle.
From the consumer information site the Boston Beer Company set up to inform consumers about this issue:
During a routine bottle inspection at one of our breweries, we detected possible defects in a small percentage of bottles resulting in the random presence of bits of glass, most the size of grains of sand, but some small slivers in some bottles as well. Based on this sample, we quickly began testing bottles of Samuel Adams at all of our breweries and identified that the problem appeared to be isolated to a single glass plant of the five that supply us.
We assembled a panel of food safety, medical and packaging experts including a medical doctor who have thoroughly evaluated the samples. People who bite or swallow a fragment could possibly be injured. While the possibility of injury to an individual consumer is very low and the Company has had no reports of any injury, we do know that the risk is not zero, so we are voluntarily recalling all products in bottles from this specific glass plant that we believe could possibly be affected. While we believe that the number of bottles that actually contain glass is significantly less than 1% of the bottles we are recalling, we are taking this measure to protect the safety of our drinkers.
Bottles made in other glass plants that supply us have not shown defects. The potentially affected bottles are easily identified by a raised letter and number visible on the bottom edge of the bottle. Affected bottles are embossed with the digits “N35” followed by the letters “OI”. Please see the photo below. Bottles with this coding should not be drunk.
They also provide a form where consumers can enter bottle codes to see if they are affected and what to do next.
(via Realbeer.com Beer Therapy)
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I spotted this article on TheStreet.com’s “Small Cap Spotlight”.
Small-Cap Spotlight: At Lagerheads Over Boston Beer
It profiles the Boston Beer Company and its investment possibilities. It is, after all, one of the very few craft brewers to be publicly traded.
The article concludes:
Meanwhile, the Sam Adams brand is consistently portrayed as a “step up” for drinkers of traditional American lagers like Budweiser, Coors and Miller, along with the “light” version that accompanies each. Not only the brand, but the product itself is clearly differentiable from the other three beers.
Put a pint of each on the table and everyone can pick out the Sam Adams just by sight. And I’d venture that there are a lot of people (especially those who don’t claim loyalty to a particular brand) out there who would have a hard time differentiating between Bud, Coors and Miller by taste. Despite its ability to stand out among lagers, Sam Adams remains a truer substitute than a product like Guinness.
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It is never too early to plan for your St. Patrick’s Day party so I thought I would start a discussion with Al and our readers about what types of beer selection you think are best to have on hand to please the crowd on March 17th.
All good hosts would want to be able to please a wide variety of drinkers. Some guests may not even *gasp* drink beer! If it were my party, I would try to meet three basic factions: 1) the occasional beer drinker, 2) the serious, megabrew junkie, and 3) the serious, real beer, drinker. (I fall into this last category.) I would love to suggest all sorts of beers, but some are just so hard to find, I will try to stick with varieties that most people can get.
The occasional beer drinker I’m defining as is the kind of person who might prefer wine over beer; or, one who doesn’t drink beer often but likes quality and interesting beer when they do drink. For this person, you might seek out something like Southampton’s Irish Red or Sam Adams Cream Stout.
Do I have to define the megabrew junkie? This is a crowd I would suggest Killian’s Irish Red for. Killian’s is made by a megabrewery (Coors) and is a weak attempt at a craft beer, but it might be different enough for your megabrewery junkie to feel a little more in with the real beer drinkers. (and a little more Irish)
I think Guinness is a must, whether that is all you drink, if you have just one, or if you plan to make some black and tans. Guinness is true to the Irish Dry Stout style, it is sure to please the true Irishman, and it makes for a darn good breakfast the next morning as well.
For that real die-hard craft beer snob (kind of like me) I suggest seeking out something different and don’t be afraid to draw outside the lines, especially if the Irish part of St. Patrick’s Day is not as important as the social beer drinking aspect. For these few people, seek out a couple big bottles of Smuttynose Scotch Style Ale or Middle Ages Brewing Blackheart Stout. Or, because I’m familiar with the products, a growler of 120 Shilling Ale (Lake Placid Brewery) for those in upstate New York, or Willy’s Wee Heavy (Long Valley Pub and Brewery) for those in New Jersey.
Maybe none of this matters to you in making your beer selections for St. Patrick’s Day; if not, tell us!
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