Two young craft brewing entrepreneurs in Rochester are receiving help from an unlikely source, the Boston Beer Co., makers of Samuel Adams, one of the country's most recognized craft brews.

The ROC Brewing Co., which opened eight months ago on South Union Street, is the dream of Chris Spinelli and Jon Mervine, both 26, who started brewing beer as a hobby in the kitchen of Spinelli's parents' home in 2009. Chris' mother, Patty Spinelli, is a partner in the business.

More than two years later, the economics majors are making and selling their beer in their own pub and at 20 other venues across the Rochester area, including Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Sticky Lips BBQ and Hogan's Hideaway.

Spinelli said things are going well.

"Business has been unbelievable," he said. "We have people flood in here Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Sometimes you can't even see past the bar."

There are a growing number of craft brewers in the area, including the Rohrbach Brewing Co. and Custom Brewcrafters in Monroe County, Naked Dove Brewing Co. in Ontario County. Even the much larger Genesee Brewing Co. in Rochester has a craft operation with its line of Dundee beers.

ROC Brewing is receiving a hand from the makers of one of America's most well-known craft breweries, Boston Beer. Early last year, Spinelli was looking for investors and capital to fund their craft brewery idea and applied for a entrepreneurial program sponsored by the maker of Sam Adams to support and encourage the creation and growth of craft breweries.

The program include loans through ACCION, an organization that lends to small businesses around the world.

Spinelli and Mervine received a $10,000 loan from the program and an invitation from Boston Beer to spend time learning and connecting with the brain trust behind Samuel Adams. Over the next year the company will fly the Rochesterians to Boston for one-on-one and group coaching on managing, marketing and growing the business and how to improve their beer. The first session was at the end of January."We got one-on-one mentoring from everyone from (founder) Jim Koch to their VP of brewing, their VP of purchasing, marketing and sales," Spinelli said. "It is a really amazing program, especially the fact that you sit in these high-level meetings with guys who are highly excited, who said this is the best meeting of their day."

The Brewing the American Dream program was started by Koch as a philanthropic effort in 2008 to encourage aspiring entrepreneurs in the food and beverage industry. Jessica Paar, a senior public relations manager with Boston Beer, said the program was recently expanded to help breweries and brewers across the country.

"We wanted to make sure that in addition to providing access to capital that we provide access to intellectual capital," she said. "So we do speed-coaching events in all of the markets where we are active and we bring our own employees in and we bring small businesses in and they can ask anything from how does our website look to advice on labeling and marketing."

Starting last year, brewers were invited into another program called "Experienceship." ROC Brewing was one of a group of winners announced at the Great American Beer Festival in Boston in October.

"We brought them down here and they got to spend two days and they interacted with the brewers and got to ask them anything under the sun and they also got access to anyone they needed to," Paar said. "It's a pretty cool program and those guys (Spinelli and Mervine) are awesome. I think they got more than they expected and they spent a lot of time with Jim to bounce ideas off of each other."

Earlier this week Mervine was back in the brewery boiling a mash for a rye beer in a large stainless pot on a rack over a gas flame. To him, beer making is an art and a perfect way to make a living. He said the experience at Samuel Adams was priceless.

"Brewing the American Dream, it's been insurmountable, the advice and information they have given us," he said, pausing to check his beer. "The people we met with in the past week, I don't know how long it would have taken us to learn that information."