Sam Adams is the flagship beer of the Boston Beer Company. On the tour of the brewery in JP, they'll tell you that there are a couple of reasons they call themselves "The Boston Beer Company" – the two most compelling – the name was available when Jim Koch started the company and they're located in Boston. A deal was announced today that will put the Boston Beer Company in a position to purchase a brewery in Breinigsville, Penn., for $55 million. They'll be able to increase production by 1.2 million barrels of beer a year, possibly as much as 2 million – which should be able to supply all the airport bars with the iconic Boston beer.

The complaint here isn't that there will be more Sam Adams available to drink. We're all for that development. The issue is that along with Cincinnati, Latrobe, and some spot in North Carolina the new brewery will supply most of brew named for one of Boston's most famous revolutionaries. The Boston location only brews a small amount of beer – mostly test batches of new varieties and a small amount that is distributed to local bars. For a beer named for a Son of Liberty, it seemed rather fitting that they'd locate a new brewery in a town named for freedom: Freetown, Mass. The Boston Beer Company had been looking at a site in Freetown to build a new brewery – they explained their decision to buy the Pennsylvania brewery by citing rising copper and steel prices and the low dollar value in the European market. Boston will keep the tour center here, and residents can always take the T to Stony Brook – remember they've got expanded hours throughout the summer.