Jim Koch is not happy

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Samuel Adams Double Bock - 2014 GABF German-Style Doppelbock or Eisbock - Gold Medal
Samuel Adams Tetravis - 2014 GABF Belgian-Style Abbey Ale - Gold Medal

I wonder how many craft beer drinkers ignored these beers because they had the name "Samuel Adams" on the label. I know a person could say that the GABF awards medals to breweries that craft beer drinkers generally don't like (Miller Lite - 2014 GABF American-Style Lager or Light Lager - Gold Medal) but we're talking Dopplebock and Abbey Ale.

People talk a lot of smack about BBC but they put out a large variety of beers, distribute a lot of sampler packs, win a lot of medals, etc... If they don't make any beer that you like that's fine. But, to me it seems like they're an easy media target because they are a large company and they have a large distribution. If it were some other small craft brewery people would start saying "yeah he was right to get mad at the guy, they should be buying local, supporting their local brewery, etc." If the bar can't sell BBC branded beers because of the stigma against them not being "crafty" enough, I can't fault them for trying to make money. But I can imagine it has become a huge headache for Jim Koch to face this stigma every day, and this just happened to be his breaking point. Honestly I give the guy kudos for standing up for his company and what he believes in, just like I give Dan Gordon kudos for giving the craft beer industry the proverbial finger by churning out all the traditional style lagers and ales he makes, and just like I give kudos to John Maier for continually producing Voodoo Doughnut beers that people continually dislike (From BeerAdvocate: 2011 - 66, 2012 - 66, 2013 -79, 2014 - 77). I like having people in the brewing industry who are passionate about what they are doing, whether or not people like it.
 
beersk said:
Like someone else said, Jim Koch just needs to be happy he's a pioneer of a huge craft beer front and stop thinking he needs to rule the world. What's really important, Jim? Sam Adam's isn't making enough money for you? Why does a business always need to be growing? Isn't there a point where you're comfortable with where you are? And if you aren't growing, your business is still a multimillion dollar business...this isn't good enough? It always has to be more, more, more, doesn't it? I don't understand this mentality. And, yes, that was major disrespect how he made that waitstaff person cry. What a dick.
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Koch is not a private owner. He has stockholders (me included) to answer to. He's not running a 3-man craft brewery. He's running a large corporation. He can't ever be satisifed. He's not allowed to be satisfied. The second a successful business man stops wanting to rule the world, he's a gonner.

SA is still one of the major gateways to craft beer for a lot of people. SA's success will continue to drive new customers toward the smaller guys, even if they think they've passed him by. This will go on even after the hipsters have moved on to some other hipper beverage (probably fermented prune juice drank out of a baby bottle).
 
it's a free country and people like him the helped the craft brewer industry along should realize that the market changes and competition from other brewers will affect his market share and people want something different. Major breweries across the world are having same issues..PEOPLE WANT CHANGE.
 
'“Their beers are kind of middle of the road,” says Max Toste, co-owner of Deep Ellum, in Allston'

That is exactly how I feel about most SA beers. I've picked up a lot of their seasonal samplers and I've just felt most of them are just not interesting at all. I will always reach for Octoberfest, but that's pretty much the only one I'll consistently drink.
 
The comment section on that article is AMAZING.

"Every craft bar is 90% IPA's, IPA's have no character or depth, all you can taste are the hops..."

Crack open a DFH 90 and tell me it's a hop bomb. Or an O'Dell IPA. Generalizations make you look uninformed.
 
hunter_la5 said:
@TxBrew, @Austin, can we get a subforum for this?

I'm unsure of where to post my fermented-prune-juice-drank-out-of-a-baby-bottle related questions.
Click to expand...

Oh sorry, we have a pineapple juice from micro bottles subforum but not enough activity on the prune juice to justify.
 
Just goes to show that everyone rich inherits a feeling of entitlement. It's disgusting really.

First Jim should know that becoming a supreme powerhouse of a brewery is going to always entail people turning their backs on you. Seems human nature to want to support the underdog. So even if their beers never changed or even if new great one's came on tap I honestly believe a significant degree of craft beer drinkers would turn their backs on SA simply due to becoming large and popular. If the makers of current highly rated trendy beers such as Heady Topper, Pliny the Elder, etc became as large a brewery and didn't touch the recipe in the slightest people would still say stuff like, "It used to be great but it's different now".

Point is, this is common knowledge and happens across many fields, even bands in the music industry. Jim should know this and be happy he's reached billionaire status and stop whining that his beer isn't being served at every single pub he walks into. The pub isn't his business and the owner has every right to decide what IS and what ISN'T on tap. After having read that article I lost a ton of respect for Jim, and while I don't really drink Sam Adams even infrequently I think my attitude has changed enough toward him from his spoiled whining to simply disregard his beer entirely from now on. I don't care to support a billionaire, hugely successful, man that is a whining baby after all that he's achieved. Man needs a piece of humble pie.


Rev.
 
1977Brewer said:
The comment section on that article is AMAZING.

"Every craft bar is 90% IPA's, IPA's have no character or depth, all you can taste are the hops..."
Click to expand...

Only point I can agree with, at least here in NYC, is that it is pretty true that trendy craft brew pubs here do tend to stock way waaaay too many IPA's to the point were there literally are mostly IPA's on tap and very little of anything else. I'm not an IPA fan, but I do like bitter beers and completely understand there are those that like insanely hoppy beers. That's great! I'm happy we have this diversity I really am. I do just wish some of these pubs would diversify the taps a bit more. Sometimes I'll walk into one of these types of pubs and find 7 IPA's on tap, one Amber Ale that is hopped to near IPA status, and one Pale Ale, and that's it, literally.

Now that's not to say they don't offer many other types of beer in bottles, I'm only referring to tap. The problem with the bottles is they are usually 12oz bottles and cost $1-$2 MORE than what's on tap!!


Rev.
 
b-boy said:
Koch is not a private owner. He has stockholders (me included) to answer to. He's not running a 3-man craft brewery. He's running a large corporation. He can't ever be satisifed. He's not allowed to be satisfied. The second a successful business man stops wanting to rule the world, he's a gonner.

SA is still one of the major gateways to craft beer for a lot of people. SA's success will continue to drive new customers toward the smaller guys, even if they think they've passed him by. This will go on even after the hipsters have moved on to some other hipper beverage (probably fermented prune juice drank out of a baby bottle).
Click to expand...

Haha, nice...

Not going to be very successful for long is he acts like a 5 year old throwing a temper tantrum.
 
I think that article has some areas that may be over exaggerated. If Koch wants SA to be competitive against what he started its time for him to get the people running the pilot system to go overboard with their ideas or any of his ideas (Imperial Boston Lager?).

Fine Koch disagrees with the other ventures that bring SA income however do not hide what products SA makes like the Macro's do. Show your diversity and hope those people will want to buy your other products.
 
SA needs to hire me because I have the solution. The next big idea.

Go out of business. People will be snapping up SA beers like, like they're going out of business. Then, and here's where it goes gold, start up anew as a bunch of micro breweries co-oping, collaborating, in the old SA brewery.

This-is-genius!
 
Sam Adams is kinda of in between Bud/Miller/Coors and great(emphasis here) microbreweries.

Back when Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada started, there was just BMC types and a couple of "craft" breweries. Not using large quantities of corn and rice like BMC beers made a big difference. People only had German, GB, and Dutch beers(for the most part) as an option, and were glad to welcome Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada to the scene.

But now, there are great microbreweries and a whole lot of homebrewers.

Drinkers of craft beer eventually gravitate to other styles (IPAs, Porters, Stouts, Sours, etc.) With the expanding market came competition. Frankly, for most of these newer styles, Sam Adams just isn't on the leading edge. If you want a malty Lager, Boston lager is as good or better as anything else, I think. But that's not what I want, and their other "craft" beers have been a big disappointment compared to the best of each genre or my own beers, IMHO.

You may think differently and that's great. But it would have to be a good sales job to convince me to spend good money in a bar for one of theirs unless it was only BMC to compete with. I'm certain that's their real problem.
 
The saddest part of the article and general view of SA is that most can't get their best beers. If all you tasted was tetravis, cosmic mother funk, utopias, etc. No one would make any of these comments. At least they make these beers instead of buying up breweries.
 
Agree with RichBenn...

If faced with the typical BMC selection at a bar I'd quaff a few Sam Adams products, but to me it has become the lowest common denominator in a world full of World Class beers. Not to disparage him for what he did - they likely weaned more than one palate off BMC for better stuff, but nothing they make knocks my socks off.

I used to think there was no greater beer than SNPA, and I still love it, but it isn't my go-to beer.

In fact, I rarely get the same beer twice. I am all about trying new things. I have a few favorites at any time, but I am more anxious to try things I haven't before. I find a brewer that has an interesting offering, and if I enjoy it generally try their other products. I dare say I've had 1/4 of SA's stuff, but nothing lit a fire under me so I moved to other stuff.

When I think about beers I admire and want to replicate, Sam Adams brews are not even on my radar.
 
Zuljin said:
SA needs to hire me because I have the solution. The next big idea.

Go out of business. People will be snapping up SA beers like, like they're going out of business. Then, and here's where it goes gold, start up anew as a bunch of micro breweries co-oping, collaborating, in the old SA brewery.

This-is-genius!
Click to expand...

They should stop producing beer so widely. They could limit it to MA. The only way you should be able to get a bottle of their beer is finding addresses in random QR codes painted as graffiti art on the sides of free trade coffee shops that only serve ancient Mayan hot chocolate with Columbian espresso shots. The bottles will be distributed during weekdays at random times, which require you to queue in line for 12 hours and take a work day off. The bottles could have a picture of Sam Adams which is hand painted with henna ink. If you are cool enough, you will already know that you can scratch off the picture of Sam Adams to reveal a secret phrase that is written in Aramaic. If it translates to "you are the chosen one" you will have the privilege of purchasing a rare variant of a Sam Adams bottle for 10x the regular price. The marketing plan for the brewery will be less focused on beer (approximately 10%) and more on selling merchandise promoting their rare beer and selling shirts letting people know that they attended these rare events (approximately 90%). If Boston Lager starts to find its way into the beer trading circles, they could come up with a new heavier ABV version called Massachusetts Lager that is only served on tap at their brew pub for two weeks out of the year. This will garner great accolades and draw beer tourists from across the globe. Then to strike when the iron is hot...they will announce that they will only sell Boston Lager from now on, and only the canned version. For years to come each newcomer to the craft beer scene will be greeted with the phrase "it was better last year." The perpetual cycle will cause craft beer neurotics to seek out old cans in search of that ancient flavor that was somehow lost years past, so that even if the beer is stale and old, they can take a picture of it for bragging rights on social media and claim that it now takes on the flavor of a finely aged English Style Barleywine.

And the name of Jim Koch will go down in the annals of time...as the greatest craft beer legend there ever was...
 
edroberts said:
The interesting thing that is brought up the in the article is something I've seen for the last several years. Larger breweries are often passed over by beer geeks not because of putting out a bad product or by not keeping up with the creative explosion of brewing. Rather because they are "always" available. Scarcity and "new" breeds a large amount of interest now days. This is not simply limited to beer, but a lot of different industries.
Click to expand...

You hit the nail on the head. It took forever for New Belgium to come to my state. Whenever I traveled to a neighboring state, I would go out of my way to get Fat Tire and others. Since they've come here, I've drank the core lineup a couple of times, but not nearly what I thought I might.

Craft beer is about the experience. There's too much out there to drink the same thing all the time. It's what makes it so hard to stay relevant. Theres simply always something new to experience.

SA does not make bad beer. But they did fall behind the times by not continuing to push the envelope and expand their brand. Sierra Nevada has the same problem. Stone, who I don't exactly group in the same category but they are similar in terms of ubiquity, stayed ahead of the game by constantly staying with or ahead of the pack.

SA are what they are, and they have demand and a market to satisfy that demand. They really should embrace that.
 
Teromous said:
They should stop producing beer so widely. They could limit it to MA. The only way you should be able to get a bottle of their beer is finding addresses in random QR codes painted as graffiti art on the sides of free trade coffee shops that only serve ancient Mayan hot chocolate with Columbian espresso shots. The bottles will be distributed during weekdays at random times, which require you to queue in line for 12 hours and take a work day off. The bottles could have a picture of Sam Adams which is hand painted with henna ink. If you are cool enough, you will already know that you can scratch off the picture of Sam Adams to reveal a secret phrase that is written in Aramaic. If it translates to "you are the chosen one" you will have the privilege of purchasing a rare variant of a Sam Adams bottle for 10x the regular price. The marketing plan for the brewery will be less focused on beer (approximately 10%) and more on selling merchandise promoting their rare beer and selling shirts letting people know that they attended these rare events (approximately 90%). If Boston Lager starts to find its way into the beer trading circles, they could come up with a new heavier ABV version called Massachusetts Lager that is only served on tap at their brew pub for two weeks out of the year. This will garner great accolades and draw beer tourists from across the globe. Then to strike when the iron is hot...they will announce that they will only sell Boston Lager from now on, and only the canned version. For years to come each newcomer to the craft beer scene will be greeted with the phrase "it was better last year." The perpetual cycle will cause craft beer neurotics to seek out old cans in search of that ancient flavor that was somehow lost years past, so that even if the beer is stale and old, they can take a picture of it for bragging rights on social media and claim that it now takes on the flavor of a finely aged English Style Barleywine.

And the name of Jim Koch will go down in the annals of time...as the greatest craft beer legend there ever was...
Click to expand...

That sounds a lot like Jester King's business model.
 
All I can say is I met Jim at GABF, he was very friendly and generous with his time, especially for a billionaire who doesn't have to give a rat's a$$ for the consumer of his product. He could easily sail off on his yacht, on a sea of money, and never worry again. In some sense, his temper tantrum shows his passion, if misplaced and misdirected.

I think BBC is in an interesting place- they sell $3/4BB of Boston Lager, Rebel IPA, and their other mainstream beers (I actually drink Rebel IPA commonly, as it is often the only crafty selection in many places- it's drinkable, for sure). OTOH, they make Utopias, and some rather obscure, really great beers. They are trying to be all things to all people- you can't mass produce popular beers and produce the latest hipster fads, too- they're incompatible. So for a former BG consultant, Jim is being a little ridiculous. He has chosen the mass product path, been very successful at it. Therefore, he chose to forego the small market trendy path, which is what a hipster beer bar caters to.

He should just buy a 2nd company to be a hipster brewer- he could certainly afford to buy anyone he wants to, a sure strategy to live in both worlds.
 
I've seen discussions about pubs in the super saturated markets, like Portland, where pubs won't even tap beers from breweries that sell more than 500 barrels a year. This certainly supports the idea that people want new, rare, special stuff.

Teromous said:
Samuel Adams Double Bock - 2014 GABF German-Style Doppelbock or Eisbock - Gold Medal
Samuel Adams Tetravis - 2014 GABF Belgian-Style Abbey Ale - Gold Medal
Click to expand...

The problem here is that this stuff is likely bomber bottle releases. The only SA you see on tap is whatever seasonal the reps are pushing and Boston lager. I'd order a doppelbock in a heartbeat and I'd like to try the abbey.
 
Here's my take on this, in agreement with a few others:

-Jim Koch is a legend and I wouldn't be a brewer today without his hard work
-Most media is biased and we're only getting one side of the story at best
-Many, many times I've been in beer hell (BMC crapola) and a Sammy was my saving grace too
-His bottles kick a** when it comes to re-using for bottling homebrew
-Sometimes, on a very rare occasion, it's nice to pay homage to the Godfather and drink a Sam Adams

Thank you Jim Koch. Your amber lager warms the soul.
 

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