Boston Beer recalls select bottles of Samuel Adams beer

(Reuters) - Boston Beer Company Inc recalled select bottles of its flagship Samuel Adams beer after safety checks at its Cincinnati brewery stoked fears that bottles may contain small grains or bits of glass, sending its shares down 4 percent.

The routine quality-control checks of its 12 ounce glass beer bottles, manufactured by a third-party glass bottle supplier, detected defects that might cause small bits of glass to break off and possibly fall into the bottle, Boston Beer said in a statement.

Boston Beer said it has had no reports of any consumer injury but the presence of small bits of glass in the bottle could pose a health risk "under certain circumstances."

The defective bottles come from a plant that supplies about 25 percent of the company's bottles.

The number of bottles that contain glass pieces is less than 1 percent of the total number of bottles supplied from the plant, the company said.

"Since our founding, we have never issued a product recall for any reason, and are deeply disappointed that these bottles did not meet our quality standards," Jim Koch, founder and brewer of Boston Beer, said.

The company's shares, which were halted before the news of the recall, had fallen as much as 6 percent to $43.84 Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. They were down $1.58 at $44.92 in afternoon trade.

(Reporting by Dhanya Skariachan in Bangalore; Editing by Pratish Narayanan)