Was Sam Adams Beer Started By The Founding Father From Boston?

How Bostonian is Samuel Adams, that famous brand of lager which once sold beer so good it was illegal? Well, not only is it named after one of the city's proudest sons, but it is also the official beer of the Boston Red Sox — and they don't save that honor for just any old beer! The fact that it bears the name of Samuel Adams, along with the rather old-timey label, might lead the casual observer to believe the beer was Adams' own, dating all the way back to his days before the American Revolution. While this isn't the case, as Samuel Adams was founded in 1985, the real Sam Adams was, in fact, involved in the beer-making process (although he apparently wasn't very good at it).

Samuel Adams, the lager, was founded by Jim Koch (commonly regarded as the father of the modern craft brewing industry), using the recipe of his great-grandfather. Ten years after its founding in 1985, the Boston Brewing Company, which is responsible for Sam Adams, went public, and Koch became a billionaire. It is a modern-day success story, no matter how cringe that "make Sam Adams part of your wedding vows" stunt was, and certainly a brewing experience much better than the real Sam Adams.'

Aside from his eventual beer-label immortality, you may know Samuel Adams as a revolutionary firebrand, the Governor of Massachusetts, and the older brother of John Adams, the second president of the United States. But you may not know that before any of that, he was a maltster. Adams' father, a deacon who was also named Samuel, malted barley and sold the product to breweries. When the elder Sam Adams died, his son took over the malt business — and proceeded to run it into the ground within a few years. Due to a fatal combination of being indifferent towards malting and terrible with money, Adams bankrupted the business and only barely avoided having to sell the family home. (And we thought Boston Market had it bad.)

Luckily for Adams, there were more pressing matters to worry about. English Parliament was levying stiff taxes on its American colonies, and plenty of Americans were furious, perhaps none more so than Adams. He set to work organizing, publishing propaganda, and instigating riots against decrees like the Stamp Act of 1765. As it happens, a lot of this organization took place in taverns and beer halls — exactly the places where Samuel Adams, the lager, would be sold some 250 years later.