PulseBooks: Miller taps Into Boston’s beer history

Before Paul Revere set out on his infamous ride, he was probably drinking a pint at the Green Dragon Tavern. In the recently released book, Boston Beer: a History of Brewing in the Hub, author Norman Miller recounts Boston’s long and storied history with beer ~ including the story of how the Green Dragon Tavern became the birthplace of the Revolutionary War, thanks to Samuel Adams (the man, not the beer). Here are ten other things we learned:

According to Miller, around the time the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, beer wasn’t just a social lubricant but a way of life. People knew that the drinking water could make them deathly ill and those who drank beer were spared. They did not realize that the boiling of the water made the ale safe.
In the 1800s, Boston had the most breweries per capita in the U.S. Thanks to prohibition, they all disappeared.
Haffenreffer Brewery, which closed its doors in 1964, is “the only Boston brewery from the 1800s to survive completely intact,” Miller writes. It is owned by the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation and is now home to the Boston Beer Company, a.k.a. Sam Adams.
The real Samuel Adams was not a brewer but came from a family of maltsters.
According to Miller, Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch originally leased 800-square-feet of the old Haffenreffer Brewery for $1 a year. Koch spent $11 million turning it into his brewery.
Koch picked the name Sam Adams in order to connect his beer with the city. When he started out, Koch received a lot of flak (and still does) for using a contract brewer in Pittsburgh to properly brew his Boston Lager (breweries, equipment and space were limited, and the Pittsburgh Brewing Company had the space to do it right). While most of Sam Adams beer is still brewed outside the city ~ Boston Beer Company owns breweries in Cincinnati and Pennsylvania ~ the Jamaica Plain brewery is used for “research and development,” according to Miller.
Harpoon Brewery was started by a group of friends who were essentially sick of drinking the crappy beer in Boston. “If you look in the state books to see who has Massachusetts Brewers License #1, you will find the name of the largest craft brewery in New England: The Mass. Bay Brewing Company, or as it is better known, Harpoon Brewery,” writes Miller.
In 1993, Harpoon released the first IPA on the East Coast.
Brewers are wicked smaht: According to Miller, “the three most successful beer businesses in Boston ~ Samuel Adams, Harpoon Brewery, and Boston Beer Works ~ were all started by people who had MBAs.”
Boston Beer Works stakes claim to brewing the first blueberry beer in New England ~ an idea that wasn’t very popular at the time, one some called “ruining beer.” Thankfully for us, the Beer Works brewers didn’t listen.