Ingot Tree

For five generations, the men in the Koch family became brewmasters. Koch began his career as a consultant, but in 1984 he founded Boston Beer Co., maker of Samuel Adams. It's now the sixth-largest U.S. brewery, and Koch is credited with launching the microbrew craze.

I'll never forget my first sale. I'd never sold anything before. I'd always had this status and prestige of three Harvard degrees and my high-paid consulting job. This meant removing all those buffers and becoming a beer salesman. It was scary. There was no growth in the beer industry, and continuing brutal consolidation. The competitors were 100 times any size I could ever contemplate being. I had told my dad I wanted to leave my job and continue this 150-year-old family tradition, and I'd thought we were going to have a warm father-son moment. He just looked at me and said, "You've done some dumb things in your life, but this is just about the dumbest." In 1948, when he got out of brewmaster school, there were about 1,000 breweries in the U.S. When I started Boston Brewing 36 years later, it was down to maybe 30. Industry consolidation meant that jobs for brewmasters were disappearing. My dad lost his job several times.

But as I explained it to him, he began to understand I wasn't trying to compete with the big American brewers that had driven all these little breweries out of business. My company didn't need to be that big for me to be happy. So we went up to the attic and got out my great-grandfather's recipe, Louis Koch Lager, and he said, "This is really good beer." I took the recipe home and made it in my kitchen as best I could. When it was finished aging and I tasted it, I knew I had something.

To sell it, I went to all five of the distributors in Boston, and I told them my idea. They thought I was weird. Their vision of a brewery was a huge corporate matrix. Here I was, one guy. Nobody had ever heard of my beer, there was no marketing behind it, and at that time it cost 50% more than Heineken. Every one of them turned me down. So I set up my own distributorship.

The day I started selling, I walked to the first bar I saw, a place called the Dock Side. I started talking to the guy behind the bar. He was just nodding, no matter what I said. It turned out that he spoke only Spanish and didn't understand anything I was saying. Luckily the manager saw me, rescued his bar back, and listened to my story. After he tasted my beer, he said, "Kid, I like your idea, but I didn't think the beer would be this good. I'll take it." I was so excited, I forgot to ask for the order. I had to go back the next day and say, "How many cases would that be?"