Craft brewing has grown up and that’s OK.
That was Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch’s somewhat sobering and yet accepting message Friday morning during the company’s annual Great American Beer Festival (GABF) media brunch.
“Like it or not, we’re not the new kids on the block; we’re not revolutionaries, like we were in the beginning,” he said. “That’s OK. Because that’s what we all worked for was for craft brewing to become a permanent fixture of the beer landscape here in the United States and now all over the world.”
Craft brewers are grappling with a more mature market in which growth is harder to achieve, and one of the scions of the craft brewing revolution appears to have accepted that the movement’s salad days are a thing of the past and there are other lands to conquer that aren’t traditional beer (see spirits, hard tea, hard seltzer, etc.).
Koch’s acceptance of craft beer’s reality comes as the industry’s largest consumer-focused event returned Thursday for its 40th iteration following a three-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Koch, who noted it was his 34th GABF, quoted from The Polar Express, a children’s book about the loss of belief in Santa Claus, in between sips of a reformulated Samuel Adams Boston Lager. The book’s narrator receives a jingle bell from Santa Claus on a trip to the North Pole that only children who still believe are able to hear.
“For a while, all my friends could hear the bell but as time went on it fell silent. For all of them. One Christmas, even my sister Sarah could no longer hear the sound, but that bell still rings for me. As it does for all who truly believe.”
“I’m 38 years in, and the bell is still ringing,” he concluded.
Reformulated Boston Lager Out in NY, Coming to More Markets in Q1 2023
Boston Lager – the company’s 38-year-old flagship – has been tweaked (“remastered,” in Koch’s parlance) to be “brighter, smoother, cleaner and to me, easier drinking,” he said.
Changes to the beer’s production include everything from new formats for harvesting ingredients to deploying bioacidification in the krausening process. Boston Beer worked with its German hop farmers to harvest Hallertau Mittelfruh hops two weeks later than previously was thought to be ideal, after the green, lush cones turn slightly gray.
“Turns out the oils and the aromas continue to increase and evolve for another two weeks,” Koch said, adding, “it’s not a beauty contest.”
Boston Lager isn’t the first beer in Samuel Adams’ core portfolio to undergo a reformulation. In 2019, the company tweaked Summer Ale for the first time in 23 years. Winter Lager got the same treatment in 2020.
Samuel Adams quietly introduced remastered Boston Lager as part of a test run in New York in 2021, according to a post on Mechanicville, New York-based DeCrescente Distributing’s website.
“We wanted to make sure we weren’t doing something stupid to an iconic beer,” Koch said.
Off-premise dollar sales of Boston Lager have declined -12% in the 52-week period ending September 4, according to market research firm IRI. The brand accounts for 1.05% of craft dollars at off-premise retailers, a -0.07% decline from the same period last year.
Boston Lager 2.0 will roll out early next year. Packaging on display at the company’s annual media beer brunch called out that the beer is “now brighter and easier drinking” on the top of a 6-pack carrier.
More NA Beer in the Offing
Boston Beer will “absolutely” consider expanding its non-alcoholic offerings beyond Samuel Adams Just the Haze, according to Koch. He credited Heineken 0.0 with showing him that it was possible to create a high-quality, non-alcoholic beer.
“Really good non-alc beer – that product didn’t exist until a few years ago,” Koch said.
Just the Haze launched in 2021.
Checkerspot Wins Brewing the American Dream ‘Experienceship’
Baltimore, Maryland-based Checkerspot Brewing Company was awarded Boston Beer’s Brewing the American Dream “Brewer Experienceship,” which will provide the company with mentorship and financial support.
Checkerspot, which was founded in 2018 by Judy and Rob Neff and produces gluten-reduced beers, will participate in a collaboration brew day with Boston Beer.