Best Of

This is such a fascinating moment in beer. They call it a merger, but when you read into it, it really is Boston Beer buying DFH. It's a big-beer scale acquisition done in a way that only some of the OGs of craft beer could dream up. Sam Calagione gets to cash out without "Selling out", and Jim Koch gets to save Sam Adams from a beer scene that no longer tends to care about beer you can buy in a supermarket. It's hugely beneficial to both of them, and I can guarantee this is the tip of the iceberg. DFH will not be the only beer company under this umbrella over time.

What's interesting to me is how they're planning on showing both brewery logos on each beer label, no matter if it's Sam Adams or DFH you're drinking. This is huge because it's a motion being made to have transparency. You know what company gets your dollar for that beer. This is important because mega-corps like AB InBev have spent the last decade buying up small indie breweries, then pushing their previously local beers to shelves all over the nation. When you grab that bottle of Elysian Space Dust, you have no way of knowing that Anheuser Busch brewed that beer in a massive facility on the other side of the state of origin. I would love to see this sort of transparency more widely adopted.