The Boston Beer Company

(CNN) -- The recipe for the Boston Beer Company's Samuel Adams Boston Lager brand was stored in James Koch's attic since the 1800s by his great-great grandfather.

The first batch of the lager brewed in recent years was made in Koch's kitchen in 1984. This was the beginning of the Boston Beer Company.

Samuel Adams is the flagship lager for the company and is brewed using traditional brewing methods such as decoction mash, krausening and dry hopping.

The name Samuel Adams was chosen in honor of the Boston patriot, a revolutionary thinker who fought for American independence. Samuel Adams was also a brewer who had inherited a brewing tradition from his father.

The first Samuel Adams lager went on sale April 1985, and by the end of the year sales reached 500 barrels.

Over the course of 2006 the company sold approximately 1.6 million barrels of beer across the U.S.

Six weeks after its introduction, Samuel Adams was selected as "The Best Beer in America" in The Great American Beer Festival's Consumer Preference Poll, an award it went on to win an unprecedented four times.

Since 2000, Samuel Adams has won more awards in international beer tasting competitions than any other brewery in the world. E-mail to a friend