Samuel Adams Boston Lager dons new label for its 25th Anniversary

(Boston, MA) – Boston Beer Co. will release its flagship, Samuel Adams Boston Lager, with all new packaging to commemorate its 25th year as the brewery’s main offering. The new labels will appear on 12 oz. bottles included in 6-packs as well as on 22 oz. bombers. The timing for when the new labels will appear on shelves is unknown.

With the innovation present in today’s American breweries, Boston Lager has taken a back seat to more “exciting” beers in recent years. Even Boston Beer is diving head first into these escapades with its Longshot Series, Utopias, and now its Barrel Room Collection. All of that said, Boston Lager may just be the most recognizable bottle on the liquor store shelf as far as non-macros go. On RateBeer, it is the second most frequently rated beer on the site with approximately 2,600 ratings, only 26 behind the leader, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

More history courtesy of Wikipedia:

“The Samuel Adams brand began with Samuel Adams Boston Lager. The original recipe was developed in 1860 in St. Louis, Missouri by Louis Koch, who sold under the name Louis Koch Lager until Prohibition, and again until the early 1950s.

In 1984, Jim Koch, the fifth-generation, first born son to follow in his family’s brewing footsteps, brewed his first batch of Samuel Adams Boston Lager in his kitchen, using the original family recipe for Louis Koch Lager. At the time, Koch was working at Boston Consulting Group after receiving BA, MBA and JD degrees from Harvard University. In December 1984, Koch left his career at Boston Consulting Group to focus full-time on brewing craft beer. Shortly thereafter, he optimized the recipe with the help of Joseph Owades, the man credited with the invention of light beer in the 1970s.

Jim chose the name Samuel Adams after the Boston patriot, who fought for American independence, and who also had inherited a brewing tradition from his father.

In April 1985, the beer was re-introduced as Samuel Adams Boston Lager, at the re-creation of the first battle of the American Revolution on Patriot’s Day. Three months later, it was voted “Best Beer in America” at the Great American Beer Festival, in which 93 national and regional beers competed. The publicity that followed helped the Boston Beer Company’s sales grow to 7,393,000 liters (63,000 barrels) in 1989. The beer was first put on tap at Doyle’s Cafe in Jamaica Plain.”

There are a couple variations of the existing label. The bottle shown in the RateBeer link above is what you will see in the U.S. If you want to see the European version, head over to Hywel’s Big Log post on the brew from two weeks ago, jam-packed with six different angled photos of the brew.

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