Beverage World - May 2008 - (Page 34) [BEVERAGEFORUM] LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD RECIPIENT Q&A A Revolutionary Brewer J The Beverage Forum 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award honors Boston Beer Co.’s Jim Koch. By Heather Landi im Koch likes to say that brewing beer is not just his livelihood, beer is in his blood. The founder of Boston Beer Co. brewed his first batch of what is now known as Samuel Adams Boston Lager in his kitchen back in 1984, using a recipe from his great-great-grandfather. Koch’s passion for flavorful, high quality beer led a revolution whose momentum helped create today’s dynamic craft beer industry. For his contributions to the beverage industry, Koch is the recipient of the 2008 Beverage Forum Lifetime Achievement Award, presented in New York City this month. business decision, it was a decision borne of curiosity and passion. I wanted to see how rich, strong and complex beer could be. Our business philosophy is simple; we do whatever is best for the beer. Our reputation is built on a foundation of quality, so the beer has to come first. BW: Is the current growth in the craft beer industry sustainable? JK: Those early days were exciting and a little unwieldy. We were growing 40 to 60 percent per year during our first decade. That’s from a small base, of course, but there was a lot of interest in the emerging craft beer category then. In the early ’90s there were a lot of brands flooding the market; some of them were good, others had audacious names and some were a little gimmicky. A lot of those lesser beers fell by the wayside when the category slowed in the late ’90s. The recent growth the craft category has been experiencing in the past four or five years feels different to me. It feels sturdier, and it feels as if it’s driven by the drinker’s real preference and appreciation for great beer. Of course, I don’t have a crystal ball. I think the demand will continue to rise, but with our KOCH BW: What accomplishments are you most proud of? JK: In two words: the people and the beer. On some level “companies” don’t really exist; they are simply groups of people working towards a common goal. Our vision statement begins with the words, “We are The Boston Beer Company.” Our mission is to brew and sell the best craft beers in America. I’m proud every day working beside the other employees here. I’m proud when I see the shelf at our brewery with a bottle of every style of beer that we have ever made all lined up… If you were to ask me for an absolute peak moment, it would be this: I would be standing in a bar with one of our salespeople who just persuaded the bar manager to put a second Sam Adams style on draft. A customer would walk in and, without looking at a list or the taps, say to the bartender, “I’ll have a Sam Adams.” BW: How do you balance the business and art of selling and brewing beer? JK: One of the great things about being the craft category leader is that we have the latitude to try new styles that we love even if we know they won’t make a lot of money for the company. Look at Utopias, the strongest beer ever made. Brewing Utopias was not a 34_BEVERAGE WORLD_MAY 2008 economy so uncertain, and prices for ingredients and transportation fuels skyrocketing, there are no certainties. BW: What do you know now that you wish you had known back then? JK: When I started in 1984, I really had no way of knowing whether people would accept a beer that was so different from pretty much everything else on the market. I went bar to bar every evening, encouraging drinkers to taste Samuel Adams, and people said they liked it, but they also knew it was my beer, so I had to factor in politeness. If I had known the demand would be so high, I probably would have expanded faster, and added more capacity to our little headquarters brewery. Oh yes, and I would have made more and better quality T-shirts. BW BEVERAGEWORLD.COM http://BEVERAGEWORLD.COM
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