Brew Skies Happy Hour

Jim Koch’s impact on the beer industry goes way beyond being a craft brewing pioneer. For example, when a variety of German noble hops was on the verge of extinction due to wilt, Jim Koch spearheaded the effort to save them. When a global hop shortage threatened to extinguish the craft beer industry, Jim Koch sold tons of his hop reserves to craft breweries in order to keep them alive. This is part 3 of a 3 part interview with Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch.

As the founder of the Boston Beer Company - makers of Sam Adams and many other brands - Jim Koch was an early pioneer in the craft brewing industry. Not one to mince words, his father’s reaction to the news that his son was starting a brewery was rather blunt. However Jim’s father was also a fifth generation brewer whose advice would be critical to the success of the Boston Beer Company. This is part 1 of a 3 part interview with Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch. 

“The ethnic cleansing,” is how top executives at Anheuser-Busch described their effort to destroy Sam Adams, Jim Koch, and the nascent craft beer industry in the 1990s. The efforts of Anheuser-Busch, makers of Budweiser and Bud Light among many (MANY) other brands, led to 8 long years of negative growth for craft beer in the United States. This is part 2 of a 3 part interview with Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch.  

In the early 1970s, Miller was a second tier and mostly regional brewery. That begins to change when they're acquired by Phillip Morris and by the end of the decade they were number 2 and nipping at Budweiser's heels. Miller's rise is largely due to advertising and the greatest marketing innovation in all of beer history: Miller Lite. Welcome to The Beer Wars.  

Schlitz was once the second best selling beer in the US behind Budweiser and for a few years in the 1950s it occupied the top spot. These two brewing behemoths were neck and neck until the 1970s when Schlitz made a few bad decisions and fell off a cliff, never to return. This is the story of the downfall of Schlitz which is a Shakespearian tale of greed and rapidly compounding layers of bad decisions. 

Like many aspects of American life in the post war era, advertising transformed the brewing industry in a myriad of ways. Those who spent big dollars on advertising would thrive while many of those that didn’t would close their doors forever. Market share became consolidated in fewer hands with the 10 biggest breweries in the US controlling 66% of the market by 1968. In this episode, Bret and Mike explore how this led to less choice and worse beer for American consumers. 

Prohibition radically altered the American palate. After more than a decade of using fruit juice and other sweeteners to make bad hooch and bathtub gin drinkable, Americans had no taste for anything bitter or sour. People wanted things that were sweet and crisp which isn’t good for beer. For the love of god, Budweiser’s pre-Prohibition beer was now “too bitter” for the American public! Beer sales and production went into a nose dive when something funny happened: World War II. 

In the late 1970s when the craft beer revolution was in its infancy, the vast majority of beer available in the United States was watery, yellow, and flavorless. How did we get to such a sad state of affairs? Turns out it has a lot to do with German immigration and industrialization. The temperance movement and Prohibition - which also had a lot to do with the Germans - didn’t help. Neither did WWI - which definitely had something to do with the Germans. This is part 1 of Mike and Bret tying it all together and trying to make it make sense.

In the Season 1 finale, Bret and Mike break down what they've learned with friend, fellow beer enthusiast, and podcaster, the Gnarly Gnome. In addition to breaking down our takeaways on why some breweries succeeded beyond the founders’ wildest dreams and some crashed and burned, we also explore our thoughts on what it means to be "craft” in the beer business and beyond. We also posit some of the many questions that we still have, and where we'll take that curiosity in Season 2. 

Founded outside of Cincinnati in 1987, Oldenberg Brewery was the first significant craft brand in the Midwest and it was at the forefront of craft beer in almost every way. Oldenberg’s massive beer hall contained the world’s largest collection of breweriana, and the brewery garnered international acclaim for its Beer Camp, which helped spread beer appreciation to attendees from around the world. Oldenberg expanded into multiple states, grew like a weed, attracted big investors, and danced on the precipice of becoming as big as Sam Adams – before it all came crashing down and died in oblivion. Former owner Dave Heidrich philosophically shares what it was like to be a darling of the late 1980s craft beer scene, a contemporary of Jim Koch and Ken Grossman, and how it felt to have a billion dollars at the tip of your fingers before losing it all.