These are large numbers in the world of beer, but a relatively modest pace of growth for the world of private equity. At face value, $145 million for 63,000 BBLs doesn’t look great (especially when the transactional value of those BBLs was $63M). But taken within the context of all the company has done, including building its Dogfish Inn, spending $5 million to renovate its brewpub space, and upping its employee ranks to around 400, more value was added than just production levels. It’s unclear, however, if that value translates into a return on the original investment for private equity investors. Still, it would seem that that large sum did more to increase the overall value of the Dogfish brand than ramp up production at excessive rates.

It was barely six months ago that the Brewers Association updated its definition of "craft brewer" to seemingly keep Boston Beer in its fold, and the reverberations of that decision, plus ongoing troubles for the company, are part of this move, too. Recent years have shown these two companies on diverging paths, with Boston Beer struggling to find staying power for beer brands like Rebel IPA or Sam ’76. Instead, the company has leaned hard on its non-beer portfolio of Angry Orchard cider, Twisted Tea flavored malt beverages, and Truly Hard Seltzer. Dogfish, however, has been on fire.

Through the first quarter of 2019, Boston Beer's sales measured by market research company IRI’s grocery, convenience, and other stores almost entirely came from non-beer brands. Meanwhile, Dogfish Head beers have grown by an average of almost 13% year-to-year from 2015–2018 in IRI stores. That growth has been led by the wildly successful launch of SeaQuench Ale and a company that’s openly embracing the excitement around an increasingly "better-for-you" portfolio of brands.

Dogfish founders Sam and Mariah Calagione will now act as the largest non-institutional shareholders of Boston Beer stock after Jim Koch, with their shares worth about $127 million. Dogfish will also receive about $173 million, wiping clean that 2015 private equity investment by LNK Partners, which the Calagiones had always said would be bought out.

“In this moment, you either keep your strength by focusing on hyper-local, or you gotta invest a shit ton of money and resources into breaking through the noise of those top-50 brands to go up the ladder of your distributors,” Sam Calagione said on the Brewbound podcast in October 2018. “There is very little opportunity between.”

It was in that conversation that Calagione hinted at a lot of what makes so much sense about this team-up, which started coming together in February of this year, according to Brewbound.