Jim Koch receives Bavarian Beer medal

At the opening ceremony of BrauBeviale in Nuremberg on 11 November 2014 Jim Koch of the Boston Beer Company gave a thoughtprovoking presentation on Samuel Adams. Mr Koch was one of three Bavarian Beer Medal winners and in his key note address he went on to tell the tale of his life as a craft beer pioneer.

Mr Koch was in his usual fine form – from serving himself a glass of his own beer to making his usual self-depreciating jokes –, but two of his remarks did not exactly go down well with the audience: one, he forgot to mention Fritz Maytag of San Francisco’s Anchor Steam brewery as one of the founding fathers of the U.S. craft beer revolution (he only acknowledged Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada brewery); two, he called the German beer purity law a form of “artistic censorship” which needs to be opened up. According to Mr Koch, a brewer should be like a chef, who is not restrained in the choice of his ingredients.

Mr Koch may have a point here (although the German brewers in the audience begged to differ) but his omission of Mr Maytag was deemed somewhat petty and not worthy of a man of his stature and achievements.