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Samuel
Adams Partners with World’s Oldest Brewery to Push the Boundaries of Traditional
Beer Law -- New Beer Style Available Spring 2010
Germany’s Weihenstephan Brewery and America’s leading craft
brewery embark on mission to harness 1,000 years of collective brewing
knowledge
Freising, Germany
(October 21, 2009) – Dr. Josef Schrädler, managing director of Germany’s
Weihenstephan Brewery, and Jim Koch, brewer and founder of Samuel Adams,
announced today their partnership and plans to unveil a new style of
collaboratively brewed beer next spring. Weihenstephan is the world’s oldest
brewery, founded by Benedictine monks in 1040. The brewery is the
guardian of a centuries-old beer purity law called the Reinheitsgebot and it has
brewed according to this law since its beginning. Every batch of
Weihenstephan’s beer is evaluated by a panel of experts for color, aroma, froth
consistency and flavor.
Founded in 1984, Samuel Adams is an American craft beer
pioneer. The brewery’s original style, Samuel Adams Boston Lager®, helped spark
the American Craft Beer Revolution by leading a return to flavorful beer brewed
in small batches. While keeping an eye on tradition, the Samuel Adams brewers
continue to innovate and explore boundary-pushing beer styles and brewing
techniques. Both breweries share great passion for the art and science of
brewing and pride themselves on using only the highest quality ingredients to
produce award-winning, world-class beers.
“The Weihenstephan Brewery
is a mecca for brewers and people around the world who are passionate about beer
and brewing. No brewer can stand at the site of this brewery without feeling a
sense of reverence for what has been done here,” said Jim Koch, founder and
brewer of Samuel Adams® beers. “It is a great honor to work together on this
mission to explore the limits of the Reinheitsgebot and to brew a beer that
represents the platinum standard in the art of brewing.”
“This journey we’ve
embarked on with Samuel Adams is unprecedented in the beer world,” says Dr.
Josef Schrädler, managing director, Weihenstephan. “We are making history with
Jim and his team of brewers; turning our traditional brewing techniques on their
head will result in an innovative beer that is ground breaking, delicious and
unique."
Working in tandem for almost two years,
the brewers from Samuel Adams and Weihenstephan are perfecting an
innovative beer style that explores new brewing techniques within the boundaries
of beer law. Their yet-to-be-named crisp, pale brew is slated to debut in the
United States and Germany next spring in cork-finished bottles. This
effervescent, Champagne-like beer will weigh in at more than 10 percent alcohol
by volume, yet remain very dry and crisp, shattering the preconceived notions of
what can be done following the Reinheitsgebot Law.
The
Weihenstephan/Samuel Adams beer marries new thinking from the world of American
“extreme beer” with tradition and respect for the Reinheitsgebot, a German beer
purity law that dates back to 1516 and states that all beer must be brewed using
only the four ingredients: malt, hops, water, and yeast. By tapping 1000 years
of brewing knowledge and coupling it with American innovation, the brewers at
Samuel Adams and Weihenstephan will brew a complex, higher alcohol beer of
distinction with only the four classic ingredients. This new beer will be ready
to share with beer aficionados throughout the world in the spring of
2010.
THE
BOSTON BEER COMPANY BACKGROUND:
The Boston Beer Company
began in 1984 with a generations-old family recipe that Founder and Brewer Jim
Koch uncovered in his father’s attic. After bringing the recipe to life in his
kitchen, Jim brought it to bars in Boston with the belief that drinkers would
appreciate a complex, full-flavored beer, brewed fresh in America. That beer was
Samuel Adams Boston Lager®, and it helped catalyze what became known as the
American craft beer revolution.
Today, the Company brews
more than 21 styles of beer. The Company uses the traditional four vessel
brewing process and often takes extra steps like dry-hopping and a secondary
fermentation known as krausening. It passionately pursues the development of new
styles and the perfection of its classic beers by constantly searching for the
world’s finest ingredients. While resurrecting traditional brewing methods, the
Company has earned a reputation as a pioneer in another revolution, the “extreme
beer” movement, where it seeks to challenge drinkers’ perceptions of what beer
can be. The Boston Beer Company strives to elevate the image of American craft
beer by entering festivals and competitions the world over, and in the past five
years it has won more awards in international beer competitions than any other
brewery in the world. The Company remains independent, and brewing quality beer
remains its single focus. While Samuel Adams is the country’s largest-selling
craft beer, it accounts for just under one percent of the U.S. beer market. For
more information, please visit www.samueladams.com.
ABOUT
WEIHENSTEPHAN:
The Bavarian State Brewery
Weihenstephan. Nearly one thousand years ago it was the monastery brewery of the
Benedictine monks, then the Royal Bavarian State Brewery. Today, as a regulated
enterprise of the Freestate of Bavaria, it is a company run according to the
precepts of private business. As the oldest existing brewery in the world, the
brewery occupies an exalted site atop Weihenstephan Hill in the Bavarian city of
Freising, surrounded by the comparatively still very young Weihenstephan science
centre of the Technical University of Munich. Yet it is precisely this unique
combination of tradition and custom, proven knowledge, and modern science, which
gives the brewery its incomparable identity and permits it to brew beers of the
highest quality. www.weihenstephaner.de
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