Samuel Adams Boston Lager is the original beer for the incredibly successful Boston Beer Company. When we say original, we don’t just mean from 1984 when the company was founded. We mean way back to 1860, when Jim Koch’s ancestor Louis Koch brewed it up in St. Louis, Missouri. Koch (the younger) used the same recipe in his kitchen. Since then it’s been tightened up and the company’s been purchased by Anheuser-Busch, but Koch is still there maintaining the family legacy. They better keep him or he might throw his beer into the harbor; it is Boston, after all.