Sam Adams Creator Becomes Billionaire as Craft Beer Rises


Rankling Microbrewers

To keep up with demand and avoid heavy capital investment in facilities, Koch began leasing excess capacity at large brewers in New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania. That rankled other microbrewers who had made large investments in equipment andfelt mass production and marketing of beer was contrary to the ideals of the craft movement, according to Tom Acitelli, author of the book “The Audacity of Hops: The History of America’s Craft Beer Revolution.”

“He taught consumers what to expect in an American craft beer,” said Acitelli in a phone interview from his Cambridge,Massachusetts office. “It’s easy to look back now and assume it all would have worked out — that good taste would have triumphed — but it wasn’t inevitable and Jim Koch helped that along, big time.”

In 1995, Boston Beer sold shares in an initial public offering at $20 a share. Some Sam Adams drinkers found offers in six packs that allowed them to buy their stock for $15 a share.

Today, the company sells more than 2.7 million barrels of beer, cider and malt beverage under the Sam Adams, Angry Orchard and Twisted Tea labels. Koch sees plenty of room for growth,noting that if craft beer continued to capture one percentage point market share each year, the sector won’t catch up toimports until 2020.

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