Samuel Adams – brewer, patriot, lender ...

This one is the hot link flying around, from The Wall Street Journal, via boatloads of Facebooking and blogging: Samuel Adams – brewer, patriot, lender.

It's a sip of financial aid for start-up craft breweries, from the well of Boston Beer Company. On the face, it seems quite cool, and given the stirrings of beer-minded folks trying to break into the ranks of New Jersey craft brewers lately, it's worth highlighting.

It also conjures up this flashback: When The Beatles started Apple Corps, and John Lennon explained their motives, "It's a company we're setting up, involving records, films, and electronics, and – as a sideline – manufacturing or whatever. We want to set up a system where people who just want to make a film about anything, don't have to go on their knees in somebody's office. Probably yours."

Hope Jim Koch's beneficence proves sustainable and no one gets burned. And a lot of great beer gets made.