Jim Koch

Koch was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Charles Joseph Koch, Jr and Dorothy Kautz Koch.[1]

Koch earned a Bachelor of Arts, Juris Doctor, and Master of Business Administration from Harvard University.

He is a former consultant with The Boston Consulting Group. He was formerly an Outward Bound instructor. In 1984, Koch co-founded the Boston Beer Company, the producers of Samuel Adams beer.[2]

In 2016, Koch published Quench Your Own Thirst: Business Lessons Learned Over a Beer or Two, in which he discussed how he left his career as a management consultant to start his own brewery using his great-great-grandfather’s recipe.[3]

In August 2018, Koch said the corporate tax cut of 2017 helped to play a major role in making Boston Beer Company more competitive in regard to foreign competitors. Koch stated that "When I started Sam Adams, American beer was a joke, and it pissed me off. And now, American brewers make the best beer in the world. And the tax reform was a very big deal for all of us, because 85 percent of the beer made in the United States is owned by foreign companies."[4][5]

Koch was married to Susan but had split up around the time that he launched the company.[6][7] He remarried to entrepreneur Cynthia Fisher in 1994.[8][9] He has two children from his first marriage and two from his second.[10] They live in Newton, Massachusetts.[11][12]

Koch is unrelated to Stone Brewing Co. cofounder Greg Koch.[13]

• Koch, James (2016). Quench Your Own Thirst: Business lessons learned over a beer or two. New York: Flatiron Books. ISBN 978-1-250-07050-0. LCCN 2015046334.