Moor’s Brewing has been named the winner of the 14th Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream (BTAD) Brewing and Business Experienceship, the company announced.
The honor comes with extensive mentorship from Boston Beer leaders across several departments, a collaboration beer project brewed in Boston and a visit to the Great American Beer Festival (GABF).
“This is more than an award – it’s an opportunity to evolve, grow, and connect with our purpose on a deeper level,” Moor’s co-founder Jamhal Johnson said in a press release. “Partnering with Brewing the American Dream and Samuel Adams gives us the tools and platform to take our impact to new heights.”
Johnson, Damon Patton and Anthony Bell founded Moor’s in 2021. Since the brewery’s launch in Chicago, it has expanded sales to more than 500 retail accounts, according to the release. In 2024, Moor’s volume output reached 246 barrels of beer, according to data from Brewers Association’s (BA) May/June issue of the New Brewer magazine.
In February, Moor’s and Highland Park Illinois-based Steep Ravine Brewing teamed up to open Diversey House, a co-branded brewpub in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. It is the city’s first Black-owned taproom, according to the release.
Moor’s was named the winner of the BTAD Brewing and Business Experienceship during the organization’s annual Crafting Dreams Beer Bash in New York City earlier this month. Six finalists pitched their businesses and poured beer samples for attendees, whose votes helped determine a winner.
The final round included pitches and samples from the founders of the following craft breweries:
- Laura Lacy, Attic Brewing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
- Cindy Nagamura Chen, BRAMS Beer, South Pasadena, California;
- Andrew Dill, Liquid Intrusion Brewing, Brandywine, Maryland;
- Mike Frohlich, Laughing Sun Brewing, Bismarck, North Dakota;
- And Chris Nadeau, Sneaky Penguin Brewing, Raleigh, North Carolina.
“The Experienceship remains one of the most meaningful expressions of who we are at Samuel Adams,” said Boston Beer founder Jim Koch. “Every year, we meet brewers who represent the future of craft beer – and Moor’s Brewing Co. embodies that future with bold vision, entrepreneurial grit and a commitment to building something greater than beer alone.”
Koch established BTAD as Boston Beer’s philanthropic arm in 2008 as a way for the company to use its expertise to help food and beverage entrepreneurs, both through mentoring and with microloans from lender Accion. Since then, BTAD has loaned $113 million and coached 16,000 entrepreneurs, according to its website.
The Brewing and Business Experienceship began in 2011 as a way “to help out fledging competitors in our own industry,” Koch wrote in his book, Quench Your Own Thirst. The desire to assist potential competition may have seemed counterintuitive, but Koch insisted that it’s not.
“With Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream, our employees have benefitted directly from the chance to interact and help start-up companies,” he wrote. “Many established companies talk about becoming more entrepreneurial, but there are few better ways to get employees to think opportunistically than by enabling them to climb into the stretches with start-up companies and see the world from their points of view.”
Recent experienceship winners have included Crowns and Hops (Inglewood, California), Funkytown Brewery (Chicago, Illinois) and Checkerspot Brewing (Baltimore, Maryland).
Revisit Johnson and Patton’s conversation about Moor’s participation in a residency program at Chicago’s Haymarket Brewing before opening their own taproom during Brewbound’s 2022 Craft Brewers Conference Brew Talks.
During the same event, Boston Beer director of partnerships Jennifer Glanville Love discussed BTAD’s mission and work on another panel featuring past experienceship winners Tim and Dali Parker, co-founders of Chula Vista Brewery.