Sam Adams’ Jim Koch On Boston Calling, Seasonal Beers and Being the 1%

Juliana Casale – ACB Boston Correspondent

Did you blink and miss summer? Not to worry; there’s still plenty to look forward to before we’re buried up to our necks in New England flurries. Now that Labor Day cookouts have come and gone, it’s time to revisit a newer tradition: Boston Calling.

In its fourth iteration as the Hub’s biggest music festival, the September 5th-7th lineup promises to be just as star-packed as its predecessors, with a new twist. While Lorde, Girl Talk, Spoon and The Roots take the stage, Sam Adams will be slinging drinks and donning lederhosen as a nod to its long-running Fall celebration, Octoberfest. In between (or during) musical acts, Boston Calling attendees can hoist steins, gobble warm pretzels and participate in lawn games – all within the concrete comfort of City Hall Plaza.

In honor of the merging of these two major events (and because, let’s face it, I need to know what I’ll be drinking this weekend), I got in touch with Jim Koch, Brewer & Founder of Samuel Adams.

Can you give us a sneak peek of what beers will be available at the festival?

Boston is without a doubt one of the best cities in the country to enjoy craft beer, and we’re excited to bring Bostonians the ultimate craft beer experience at Boston Calling. We’ll of course be pouring our Samuel Adams OctoberFest, a German Märzen style beer perfect for the season.  Additionally, we will be serving our Samuel Adams Boston Lager and Rebel IPA, our new west-coast style IPA first brewed in our nano-brewery here in Boston.

Aside from Boston Lager, you’re most known for pioneering seasonal beers like Summer Ale and Winter Lager. How has the especially long winter and exceptionally short summer in New England impacted the way you’ve brewed and distributed beers this year?

In New England, we tend to look forward to the next season – whether that’s dreaming of brisk fall days in the middle of summer or crisp spring days in the dead of winter – we want to offer our drinkers a refreshing change of pace and a hint of what’s to come.

Delivery dates for our seasonals have a lot to do with when the previous seasonal sells out. Our deliveries start before the actual season starts, but it varies market to market. This year, Summer Ale sales exceeded our expectations and we sold out earlier than we planned, so we have had to introduce OctoberFest on shelves and on tap to replace Summer Ale.  And the transitions usually take about a month after the new seasonal shows up.  For instance, about half our retailers still have Summer Ale at the end of August and some still haven’t converted to Samuel Adams Octoberfest in the week after Labor Day.

While craft beer sales only account for about 8% of the US beer market, in Boston you’re a pretty big fish. How do you relate to smaller breweries?

After 30 years of brewing, Samuel Adams is just 1% of the beer market, and I am proud of that 1%! Today, there are more than 50 craft brewers in Massachusetts and we have a thriving craft beer culture comprised of passionate brewers and drinkers. At its core, the culture of brewing and drinking craft beer celebrates camaraderie, collaboration and an independent-minded spirit. We started our philanthropic program called Brewing the American Dream to help other small business owners get started. We have helped over a dozen brewers in our program by providing micro-loans as well as coaching and mentoring. 

You mentioned that Rebel IPA originally came from your nano-brewery. What’s going on there?

Our 5-gallon nano-brewery, which is located within our Boston brewery, is where we create the majority of our new beer recipes.

Sometimes we want to try brewing with a unique or special ingredient or try a new process. Often we do test brewing with several new varieties of hops. In fact, we brewed a series of single hopped beers to see how the different hops change the profile of the beer, what is the sensory effect, and if we might want to use them in an upcoming brew.

This spring, we released our first Rye IPA, called Roggen Wolf, which was brewed in our nano-brewery. It took around three months to get from the initial idea to transition into production.

I recently read that 93 of your employees are Cicerone Certified. What is the importance of this training to the Boston Beer Company?

I was once asked why we invest so much in training our employees when ultimately, they might leave? But, what if we didn’t train them, and they stayed? At Samuel Adams, training is in our DNA. We offer Cicerone training courses to all of our employees.

As craft beer grows, drinkers have more and more choices, and beer training for those serving and selling beer becomes more and more important. At Samuel Adams, we ask our entire sales team to achieve at least the Certified Beer Server level of Cicerone, and many of us in other areas (from finance to HR) become certified as well. Right now, we have over 8% of the total number of Certified Cicerones in the world! This is a true testament to our commitment to the program when you consider we are just 1% of the beer market (and considering it’s not just brewery employees that become certified, it’s restaurant staff, wholesalers and others as well).

In 30 years you’ve probably witnessed a lot of beer brewing trends. What are you excited about?

In terms of beer style trends we are seeing now, obviously IPAs still remain one of the most popular styles amongst drinkers.  We currently brew a wide variety of IPAs including our newest West Coast style IPA – Rebel IPA, as well as Latitude 48 IPA, Whitewater IPA and Grumpy Monk, our Belgian IPA, but look forward to continuously introducing styles which drinkers may not have tried before like our Kosmic Mother Funk (KMF) Grand Cru.

KMF is tart, funky and complex with notes of dark fruits, cherry, cocoa and vanilla. It’s a brew that has been fun to create and introduce to drinkers. We’re constantly looking to innovate and experiment, which is what makes being a craft brewer so fun.

And there you have it. For those of you attending Boston Calling, Sam Adams will be on hand with tasty craft beers and sausages to fuel your three-day dance party. But if you can’t make the festival, fear not – the Boston brewery is planning an additional Octoberfest event in its original location.