SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

https://abc7news.com/anchor-brewing-company-san-francisco-brewery-closing-business/13493162/

by c5karl • 3 years ago

246 300 3 years ago

maxiepoo• 3 years ago

I'll be surprised if none of the bigger beer companies ends up buying it for the brand and history alone. But maybe it doesn't have as much name recognition as I thought.

garciasn• 3 years ago

Anchor Steam had its place, 20+ years ago. It had a long-standing tradition of being a beer that stood the test of time, head and shoulders above the usuals of the time.

The problem is they failed to continue to keep up with the times as the proliferation of truly fantastic beers hit and later dominated the scene. Take a look through their flagships; they look more like what any new and likely-soon-to-close brewery will start with (a hazy, a west coast, a porter, a lager, and an ale) rather than a brewery steeped in 100+ years of history and brewing mastery.

Anchor Steam may have had the brand recognition necessary to survive in an overcrowded market say 10 years ago, but now people are flocking to the breweries themselves and are not as tied down into a single brand as they used to be.

It's sad but in the same way that any long-standing brand that couldn't keep up with the Joneses and went out of business is sad. Not really in any other way.

astura5• 3 years ago

They are already owned by a big company - Sapporo.

I've heard that Sapporo has been trying to sell it for couple years now. Nobody's buying.

kasey_junk• 3 years ago

They had to be famously saved by a rich guy as a vanity project earlier in their life.

Perhaps it’s time to admit it’s just not a viable product, especially now that the US beer scene is so expansive.

wl• 3 years ago

Famously saved in a way that kicked off the American craft brewing movement. Fritz Maytag brought a modern microbiological perspective to American brewing, reintroduced dormant American styles, validated that there was a market for such beers, and deliberately helped other breweries brew great beer rather than expanding faster than he felt comfortable to meet demand. It was a viable business when Maytag decided to retire in 2010.

flyinghamster2• 3 years ago

And I think the economy has a great effect. Craft beer is expensive, and when everything else has doubled in price, it becomes a luxury. Between that and competing for shelf space when the oligopoly has crammed the shelves with faux "craft" beers, I'm expecting a shakeout in the craft brew business - a local brewery closed up at the end of May with about a week of warning and no reason why, even though the taproom always had customers.

WiseWeasel3• 3 years ago

A shame they weren’t able to adapt to modern beer tastes. As long as I can remember, I've thought of them as the mediocre beer I’ll begrudgingly drink only if all other options are exhausted.

the_common_man• 3 years ago

I thought anchor steam is pretty good. What beer do you like?

WiseWeasel3• 3 years ago

I guess Sierra Nevada was a big influence early on, and since then I’ve come to appreciate a large variety, from more hoppy offerings from the likes of Russian River, Lagunitas, Stone and recently Almanac, to lagers from Pacifico and Dos Equis, several prominent Belgian brands, and some local sours. I enjoy a wide variety, but always thought of Anchor Steam as bland, malty, and mediocre, on the same low level as Fat Tire, to name a comparable brand.

That said, I’ve only had it bottled, never on tap.

chubot2• 3 years ago

Anchor steam on tap is very good IMO

In the bottle it seems to lose everything for some reason

I never buy it in the bottle, but I get it on tap

But I’ll admit there are a zillion options that are similar or better now. The market changed a lot

chubot2• 3 years ago

The obvious follow up is I think they must not have kept up with the times

I’d guess bottles are the majority of the business and I think that product is inferior

I don’t know what the other breweries do, maybe it’s just freshness and inventory, or a better or more consistent bottling

—

I should also add that I lived in SF, so it’s definitely possible that most customers out of city think of them as a bad bottled beer brand, whereas I had a different impression

AnotherGoodName5• 3 years ago

Part of the problem is that the steam beer process they used is a cheap and nasty process by design and they were one of the last holdouts of that style. I did a tour of their brewery where they do the open air fermenting (hence the name, steam came off it). It's a way to save refrigeration costs in brewing and makes for a poor beer.

If they adapted to modern tastes they wouldn't really be steam beer anymore. They'd be another beer brewed the same way as the others. At which point you're calling non steam beer steam beer.

local_crmdgeon• 3 years ago

Last holdouts

They were only a "holdout" insofar as they sued anyone else who used that process. They were kind of a shitty corporate citizen and I'm not sad to see them go.

greesil2• 3 years ago

I got to do a tour of the place, it was really fun. It's located near Potrero Hill. I can't say anything about their cost structure but having a location that's in SF probably has some disadvantages. But, there are a lot of other craft brewers in the bay area that are quite good. Drake's, Faction come to mind. You don't have to go much further afield to find Bear Republic, Russian River Brew Co. I would not consider Lagunitas craft, maybe someone else with more beer lore could weigh in.

ryaneager• 3 years ago

There’s 50+ smaller breweries sprinkled across the North Bay within 1.5hrs of SF. Civilization, Fog Belt, Cooperage, Iron Ox, Henhouse, Barrel Brothers, Moonlight, Shadyoak… just to name a few.

stickfigure2• 3 years ago

The comically small town of Winters has two - Berryessa Brewing and Hoobies. Both great. Closer to Dixon/Davis, Ruhstaller is a blast - especially on weekends.

greesil2• 3 years ago

Time to go out for a beer tour!!

kevinmchugh• 3 years ago

The only rigorous definition of "craft" is the one the brewer's association maintains, and they tweak it frequently to keep Sam Adams in. Lagunitas was a craft brewer by that definition until they sold to Heineken. There was a period of a few years where a number of old-guard regional craft brewers sold to international conglomerates.

For my money while the brewery may not be craft anymore, the beer still is. Or, if someone calls Lagunitas IPA a craft beer I'm not going to correct them - I might if it was blue moon or leininkugels, say.

krustyburger• 3 years ago

It’s important to note that Anchor as a division is being shut down as a cost-saving measure by its owner Sapporo, a transnational, publicly-traded corporation.

Sapporo says they have tried to find a buyer for Anchor, but to no avail. Meanwhile Sapporo recently purchased Stone Brewing in San Diego and are beginning Sapporo production there while still making Stone beers. If Sapporo hadn’t also bought Stone, presumably their plan was to brew Sapporo at Anchor in a similar way. In that scenario, they probably would have continued producing Anchor beers in some quantity too.

rco8786• 3 years ago

Genuine question. Why is this important to note?

eweise2• 3 years ago

Can Anchor be considered a craft brewer if its owned by Saporro?

gjvc2• 3 years ago

It's not the case that a family-owned self-contained company had to cease trading -- someone higher up in the ownership of the business decided to pull the plug. Although the inputs and outputs might arguably be the same, these are two quite different scenarios and decision-making processes.

jessriedel• 3 years ago

I thought this was useful context that changed my interpretation of what was going on.

jccalhoun• 3 years ago

I don't live anywhere near this place so I may be wrong but because the article makes it sound like some small company is closing when in reality is it a division of a company that is closing. So to me it doesn't matter any more than when Coke stopped making Tab.

kodt2• 3 years ago

The decision to close is likely influenced by their ownership, while if it were still independent they may try to find a way to make it work on a smaller level.

dreamcompiler• 3 years ago

For me it's the end of an era. I started drinking Anchor in the 1980s on frequent trips to Silicon Valley. This was long before microbreweries existed or were even legal in most places, with two exceptions that I'm aware of: Anchor in San Francisco and Shiner in Texas. One's choices of beer in the US included the ones made by the giant breweries and ... almost nothing else except Anchor and Shiner, which were both much better than Bud or Coors or Miller.

But today Anchor and Shiner are objectively not that great compared to modern craft-brewed beers. I still drink them mostly because of nostalgia.

ipqk• 3 years ago

Because half the people here think this has to do with the local economy and politics of SF, when in reality it's the economic situation of the craft beer market & world economy at-large.

Solvency• 3 years ago

I think we can start dropping useless affectations like "it's important to note" now that ChatGPT has utterly co-opted them and revealed how meaningless they are. You could have simply stated that Anchor division is being dropped. I'm already reading your comment. You don't have to sell me on why you're noting it.

gjvc2• 3 years ago

Did you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A... ?

backtoyoujim• 3 years ago

Are you kidding ? You want us to bend our language usage for ChatGPT ?

Can you just let humans write without LLMs controlling the development of our language ?

We have managed to have language without your ChatGPT.

alex_young• 3 years ago

Personally I think it’s important to note the community standards here when replying to comments. It’s better to thoughtfully discuss something than to criticize the writing style of someone else in my opinion.

i_am_jl• 3 years ago

We can start dropping useless affectations like "I think" now that ChatGPT has utterly co-opted them and revealed how meaningless they are. You could have simply stated that reading hurts you. I'm already reading your comment, you don't need to tell me that you think the things you write.

ChainOfFools5• 3 years ago

Lazy hack English professors teaching 1A and 1B gen eds to students by prescribing robotic formulas that include appositives and qualifiers like this, in my opinion completely deserve what they are getting when the same students are now feeding them robotically written essay assignments that follow these rules slavishly.

lesdeuxmagots2• 3 years ago

It would seem that Sapporo did not do enough diligence when they bought Anchor. Anchor's facilities are far too small, their infrastructure and their team not setup to brew at that sort of scale. Stone is a much better fit for what they seem to be trying to do.

AnotherGoodName5• 3 years ago

I mean they had an entirely unique process. That was their whole shtick.

They had a big multistory warehouse type brewery with fields of open air swimming pools fermenting. That's what made it steam beer. Their setup isn't like any other brewery at all. No vats for brewing!

Anchor Steam brewery is as similar as a concrete plant to other breweries.

So if Sapporo bought this for $143million thinking they could make other style of beer there and didn't even do a brewery tour omfg.

bartread5• 3 years ago

I think that is an important point but, with that said, I'd suggest that perhaps the reason Anchor were struggling is they didn't really innovate. Rather they rested on the laurels of that 127 year heritage.

Certainly a very personal opinion but the first time I tried Anchor beers sometime in the noughties I was underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong: they're certainly better than Bud, Coors, etc., but as a Brit coming from somewhere with a by then thriving real ale scene, Anchor's beers just weren't that great. More than that, they weren't up to the standards of many other US-brewed craft beers I'd tried, many of which are at least as good as anything the UK or mainland Europe has to offer[0].

The microbrewing scene in the US has really taken off over the past 20 years so, to me, it felt like Anchor just got left behind by it. And maybe Stone Brewing have a bit more to offer[1] and it was easier for Sapporo to buy them and roll with it than to try and revitalise a brand seen as ailing? I'm not saying I like it but I can certainly imagine that perspective within the company.

[0] By the mid-2010s there did seem to be a tendency to overegg IPAs by making many of them ludicrously strong, and just trying to cram in too much flavour, not to mention the consistency of many was borderline gloopy (more like drinking blood than beer) - mercifully I think this trend may be reversing.

[1] Pure speculation: I don't remember ever trying any of Stone's beers so have no comment to make on their quality or otherwise.

sfpotter4• 3 years ago

I'm a little surprised Anchor didn't do better. I personally got worn out by all the craziness and experimentation in the craft brewing scene. Really unique IPAs or sour beers were fun for a while, but after a while, I realized I just wanted something reasonably good and predictably normal, i.e. a Normal Good Beer. It seemed like Anchor was delivering on this, but maybe there were enough other options that they just didn't distinguish themselves well enough. Too bad, considering they're a local beer with a lot of history and had a successful unionization effort.

splonk4• 3 years ago

Anchor actually did have a bunch of more modern beers after the Sapporo acquisition, but they were only available at the taproom. They only had retail distribution for the old reliable flagships (and then had a rebranding that was not well received).

ecocentrik• 3 years ago

This news has nothing to do with lack of innovation. The entire beer market is currently contracting.

Also, not everything needs to innovate. Every field needs a canon of notable creations that have stood the test of centuries or millennia and beer brewing is no exception.

Rapzid3• 3 years ago

Their Porter is fantastic and on par with Fuller's.

jms703• 3 years ago

Why does a beer have to innovate?

efsavage• 3 years ago

My beer journey started in the 90s and Anchor had good distribution when such things were difficult for smaller brands, but even back then it was always the last beer in the cooler at a party. I'm surprised they lasted this long.

paulmd5• 3 years ago

[1] Pure speculation: I don't remember ever trying any of Stone's beers so have no comment to make on their quality or otherwise.

Most of the Stone beers I've tried have ranged between "meh" and "pour out the can". Buenaveza (salt and lime cerveza) is the only one I've really enjoyed from them, and I've given them a number of tries. Buenaveza is a perfectly fine lawnmowing beer or party beer though and I do get it occasionally, but there's also several other cervezas here that are super good and super cheap too (Cerveza Delray is great).

They seem reasonably popular so it's entirely possible it's just me, I'm a picky drinker and I know what I like and don't like. But that said, it doesn't seem like "brewed by stone" is some massive mark of quality for sapporo, at least to me. Maybe they're good relative to the alternatives who could produce beer at macro scale.

(is there a term for the Goose Island-style operations that are owned by macrobrews and produce relatively large quantities? Some of those operations really straddle the line between macro and micro.)

Anyway though, there are definitely companies where I agree with the head brewer's taste and ones where I don't.

monkeyodeath• 3 years ago

Sapporo's "innovations" for the Anchor brand were to pick a fight with labor, tinker with the recipe of their most historic beer, and green-light of the most infamously eye-searing rebrands in recent memory.

tezka• 3 years ago

but as a Brit coming from somewhere with a by then thriving real ale scene,

Served at room temperature. Yikes.

last_responder• 3 years ago

Well Stone is now off the buy list.

codyb2• 3 years ago

Is Sapporo a bad company?

ChainOfFools5• 3 years ago

Thankfully San Diego and the whole region south of camp pendleton has about a hundred other excellent craft brews to choose from, including the beer that inspired Stone and out-stoned Stone even after Stone tried to copy it, Green Flash. Sadly it's nearly impossible to find these days, largely thanks to Stone.

everybodyknows• 3 years ago

Don't see how shutting down an unsuccessful operation makes Sapporo an unethical actor.

Regarding Stone however, there's this, predating its acquisition by Sapporo:

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/08/21/national-brewer-goes/

jerhewet2• 3 years ago

They shouldn't be. Yes, they aren't as "amazing" as they used to be, but their staple IPA's are just as good as they've always been. I'm drinking one of their Delicious IPA's right now, and I'm enjoying it just as much as I did when they first released it. The new citrus variation on Delicious is one of my favorites.

RC_ITR• 3 years ago

Also worth noting that Sapporo went through with a rather disastrous rebrand that both made it less unique and harder to find on shelves.

https://sfist.com/2021/01/28/anchor-brewing-dragged-on-twitt...

mrobins• 3 years ago

The rebranding really was disastrous. Echoing other comments, as someone who bought 6 packs largely for nostalgia or to reconnect with SF from the east coast the new packaging ruined that.

xkgwkdmgjtx2• 3 years ago

See also my comment about what Anchor employees are saying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36696764

splonk4• 3 years ago

The local reports were that Anchor had been slowly losing money for years before the Sapporo acquisition. Supposedly Sapporo was intending to use the Anchor facility to brew Sapporo locally and then eventually found out that the site wasn't really suitable or would require too much renovation. Whether this led directly to the Stone deal, I don't know (I doubt it, given relative sizes, but it may have been a contributing factor). In general, even before the Sapporo acquisition, Anchor was slowly getting pushed out of local bars by other, smaller local breweries. Once I started seeing things like Standard Deviant's kolsch or Harmonic's pilsner taking up one of the taps in smaller restaurants that only had 2-4 taps, the writing was probably on the wall.

I suspect one of the local breweries will be happy to acquire Anchor if Sapporo's going to sell it off at fire sale prices (c.f. Cellarmaker/Rare Barrel, Drake's/Bear Republic).

photonerd3• 3 years ago

Oddly I only have ever seen Anchor in bottles in the Bay, but it was (and is) still really popular as a beer of choice locally.

I’m guessing it’s not the local market that’s the issue

tptacek2• 3 years ago

My understanding was that the Sapporo transaction was a fire sale; is that wrong? If it isn't, it doesn't much matter what Sapporo did; Anchor was a dead brewery walking anyways.

rdj2• 3 years ago

That's the sentiment in the industry. Here's some numbers from when the sale happened.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/japans-sapporo-buys-craft-...

111111IIIIIII• 3 years ago

presumably their plan was to brew Sapporo at Anchor in a similar way

Think again. Anchor was unionized. Stone is not.

AnotherGoodName5• 3 years ago

Fun fact is that anchor had a custom brewing setup unlike any other. Custom made pots, open air swimming pools to brew (that's what makes it steam beer) and a different process to every other brewery. It was fun to tour their brewery since it's so wildly different.

If Sapporo bought this brewery assuming they could make Sapporo premium there that's fucking hilarious. All it would have taken was a tour to understand that's not possible. Anchor Steam brewery is as different to any other brewery as a concrete plant is to any other brewery.

I didn't like their beers myself but did appreciate their unique process.

sparrish• 3 years ago

Honest question: how did this SF brewing company survive prohibition? If it really is 127 years old, it must have existed during prohibition. How was it not shut down then? I'm curious.

sithadmin• 3 years ago

A lot of American brewers survived by switching to non-alcoholic beverages or selling the raw ingredients for home brewing and winemaking operations under the guise of 'baking ingredients' or the like. Some sold practically non-alcoholic 'near beer'/kvass-type malt drinks, but it wasn't especially popular.

floren3• 3 years ago

The grape growers dehydrated grape juice and sold it in bricks as "instant juice", with instructions: "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine."

https://grapecollective.com/articles/prohibitions-grape-bric...

semi-extrinsic• 3 years ago

Slightly less than 10% of US breweries surcived the 13 years of prohibition, mostly through a) being large companies that owned a lot of assets and real estate, and b) successfully pivoting into anything from ceramics production to non-alcoholic foods like ice cream/tea/coffee/juices to the sale of yeast and malt syrup that people could use to homebrew beer.

And prohibition had been a long time coming, some companies like Anheuser-Busch had been preparing for several decades.

samstave• 3 years ago

Some p[eople I knew purchased a really huge victorian in the Castro some years ago - and in the bottom floor was an original speak-easy with full bar and pool table and booths etc...

I would assume that there were many of these speak-easys in SF during prohibition...

Sadly they immediately remodeled and took the speak-easy out.

floren3• 3 years ago

Sadly they immediately remodeled and took the speak-easy out.

Well sure, gotta get that basement unit... bar & pool table out, vinyl flooring & Ikea in!

arp242• 3 years ago

According to their website: "Prohibition effectively shut Anchor down in 1920. There may have been a few “activities” during Prohibition and the era of bootlegging, but there is no record of Anchor Brewery doing anything—legal or illegal—during this time. After Prohibition ended in April 1933, owner Joe Kraus began brewing Anchor Steam Beer after a thirteen year hiatus. As luck would have it, the Brewery went up in smoke the following February. He re-opened Anchor in an old brick building with a new partner, Joe Allen, just a few blocks from where the historic Brewery is today."

https://www.anchorbrewing.com/about-us/the-anchor-story/

beembeem• 3 years ago

I went down this rabbit hole on National Beer [1] day this year.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Beer_Day_(United_Stat...

lesdeuxmagots2• 3 years ago

They started selling at scale 1 or 2 days after prohibition ended. This is logistically impossible if they were truly shut down during the entirety of prohibition.

astura5• 3 years ago

Some breweries pivoted to selling near-beer and other NA beverages or foods during Prohibition, or just closed for those years and restarted afterwards.

Yuengling famously sold ice cream during Prohibition, and apparently still makes it in small batches.

acheron2• 3 years ago

Anchor was established in San Francisco in 1896 and was the country's first craft brewery.

So what definitions are being used here to claim this? Yuengling is quite a bit older, for example.

ryandamm• 3 years ago

Yeah the article is a little muddled; it’s better to understand Anchor as the oldest existing brewery that makes what we think of as craft beer.

When it started there were many small, local brewers making a variety of beers. Prohibition and changing tastes killed off most of the breweries — it helped to be above a certain size so you could profitable brew, say, malted syrups during prohibition. Those that remained after prohibition ended quickly consolidated — that’s how we got the oligopoly off Bud, Miller, and Coors.

Consolidation continues for decades afterwards of course; the brands that got rolled up into the conglomerates included a number of light lager breweries. What distinguishes Anchor from Yuengling and others is Anchor made something other than a light lager — they made steam beer, a warm-fermented lager that has some ale characteristics.

I would categorize it as “proto-craft,” since the real craft movement started in the 80s with Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams; Anchor was an inspiration, a holdover, and an anomaly.

(Most of my sources for this post are Celebrator beer magazine and a series of books I’ve read, but I don’t have them at my fingertips so I may have some specifics slightly wrong here, caveat emptor for reading random internet comments.)

acheron2• 3 years ago

Makes sense, thanks.

awithrow3• 3 years ago

Yuengling's flaghsip is an Amber Lager, not a light lager in the same vein as bud/miller/coors. Also, they didn't introduce their amber until the 80s. Prior to that their main beer was their porter.

I don't think there is a coherent definition of craft breweries that includes Anchor but not Yuengling

mattmaroon2• 3 years ago

Yuengling is not considered craft beer by a lot of people because it’s made mainly from adjuncts, in their case corn. It’s only recent that the Brewer’s Association changed the definition to include them, but most people in the industry disagree with it. Yuengling is just a cheaply made lager that’s really no better than Budweiser.

But, that term doesn’t have an official definition so they still can claim the title.

floren3• 3 years ago

Yuengling is just a cheaply made lager that’s really no better than Budweiser.

Now, maybe in terms of production methods, but I've consumed plenty of Bud and absolutely gallons of Yuengling, and Yuengling stands apart. It's not fancy, but it's good.

College parties in Rochester would usually include Labatt, Molson, Yuengling, and Genesee. Only the Yuengling was worthy as a drinking beer; Labatt and Molson were just for shotgunning & pong, and Genesee was for joking about what it did to your bowels.

ak217• 3 years ago

Yuengling sure tastes better than most "craft" beers to me.

awithrow3• 3 years ago

Its just plain incorrect. As you note, Yuengling is older (1829) and is considered a craft brewery by the Brewers Association. Given that this is just a local news website, I just assume they're not exactly doing a ton of work verifying the press release

tanjtanjtanj• 3 years ago

The definition of a craft brewery from the brewer's association is more practically stated as "The same size or smaller than Sam Adams".

domh• 3 years ago

This is pretty gutting as someone who lived in SF for a few years and drank quite a lot of Anchor Steam beer during that time. It's a shame to see such an iconic brewery closing down. I did a tour last year and loved the history and seeing the old copper brewing tanks that they still used. Shame they couldn't keep up with the modern tastes and amount of microbreweries popping up. RIP

ChrisArchitect• 3 years ago

A month ago the story was limiting national distribution etc....... that escalated quickly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301974

schnable• 3 years ago

Props for being the original craft beer, but I never liked it.

yamazakiwi6• 3 years ago

It's not the craft beer even though the article states such

gohwell• 3 years ago

This beer always reminds me of NOFX - Scavenger Type

dpifke• 3 years ago

I miss the days when you could get a pint for 13 quarters.

And as someone who left SF almost a decade ago, I just checked and was very surprised to see that Bottom of the Hill is still open.

flyinghamster2• 3 years ago

I hadn't really kept up with that side, but Anchor had a distilling operation as well, with a rye whiskey that was unusually 100% malted rye (Old Potrero).

From what I can see, that's now owned by Hotaling, and not affected.

splonk4• 3 years ago

I believe the distilling operation was separated from the brewing operation when Sapporo acquired it (I think maybe they had to remove the still through the roof with a crane?). I used to drink some with a guy who worked on the distilling side and tried a few of the Old Potrero variants, but none of them were really to my taste. Certainly unusual and worth trying, though.

wahnfrieden• 3 years ago

Why aren’t we celebrating the market efficiency?

nemo44x2• 3 years ago

Sort of went the way of Pete's Wicked Ale. Interestingly, Anchor was really bad beer before Maytag bought the company, updated the equipment, and started using quality ingredients. You have to give him credit for taking it from 0 to being influential in developing the American craft beer market and making Anchor something you could reliably find nationwide.

I guess time sort of passed it by. So many more interesting brews are around today. But saying that, I always sort of enjoyed an Anchor. Sad to see it go.

hyperbovine2• 3 years ago

Many this really sucks. Many a cold summer day did I spend sipping a pint of Anchor at Kennedy's on Columbus, at the Albatross in Berkeley, and at various other water holes around the city and in the East Bay. Feels like my 20s just died.

Neff• 3 years ago

I wonder what will happen to the term "Steam Beer" now.

If I remember correctly, after the end of prohibition Anchor claimed ownership of the term "steam beer" even though it is a name of a style of beer and forced any other brewery to use the names "Steam Ale" or "California Common".

With Anchor being shuttered it would be great for Sapporo to release ownership of the style name so the BJCP can update the category back to the historically accurate title.

tristor2• 3 years ago

This doesn't surprise me. As somebody who got deep into craft beer, I have always thought of Anchor Steam as being relatively mediocre. They were likely a breath of fresh air well until the 1980s, but my the early 1990s there was a burgeoning US craft brewing revival that had a solid brewery (and in most cases better than Anchor) in every US state. They also aren't the only old craft brewery in the US, generally.

It's unfortunate, but operating in one of the most expensive places in the US isn't something that's compatible with being mediocre in a highly competitive market.

dbcooper• 3 years ago

It's an excellent beer of its type, and IMO of any beer type. It may be subtle, but not everything has to be an big hoppy IPA, or a sweet NEIPA etc.

Do you also think that Pilsner Urquell, Jever, or Budvar are mediocre?

AnotherGoodName5• 3 years ago

I agree that it is an excellent beer for it's type but steam beer as a style is dying and for good reason. Very few like that type.

The steam beer process was literally created as a way to cheaply make a lot of beer.

tristor2• 3 years ago

Anchor hasn't made actual steam beer in a very long time. Their brewing operation is effectively similar to most other mid-sized batch lagers, with modifications to bring it in line with their historic flavor profile. Historic steam beers were considered, even at the time, to be low-quality, and the method of making steam beer is primarily a way to make large quantities of beer at a low cost. Modern brewing is much more efficient thanks to technical advances than historical brewing and these types of techniques are mostly unnecessary to achieve the same thing. Anchor does do a high temperature fermentation process, which is part of what made steam beer, steam beer, and this still has direct impacts on its flavor profile. The actual process of making steam beer was only necessary prior to refrigeration, with modern technology you can have a much higher volume and more controlled brewing operation even when using high temperature methods.

The flavor of the beer is heavily influenced by the yeast strain and fermentation temperature, and the primary basis of what steam beer is, fundamentally, is lager that is fermented at relatively high temperature. The yeast strains that stand up these higher temperatures tend to produce lower quantities of the types of esters that produce lasting flavors in beer, and higher temperatures tend to result in a loss of important flavoring compounds which are types of volatile organic chemicals and tend to be temperature sensitive.

There's very specific, replicable, and well-understood reasons why high temperature lagers and steam beers don't taste as good as typical low temperature lagers. I do not think your representation of steam beer is accurate, and I feel I have some authority to that claim. I am a subject matter expert on beer, a certified cicerone, and an extensive home brewer.

I am not trying to diss Anchor, I'm simply stating a mere fact, which is that their beer is mediocre. Not bad, but it is certainly not a world class beer. It may have been in pre 1980s, but the current craft brewing culture has advanced far beyond most beer drinkers expectations. For the record, I am not a huge fan of IPAs, although I will drink them, and I don't think "craft beer" and "IPA" are analogous concepts. Your reply to me reveals your biases, and indicates you didn't critically engage with my prior comment.

bamfly• 3 years ago

I like a lot of styles of beer.

I long ago put Anchor in the "meh, don't bother buying again" category.

There's a lot of new stuff to try, more all the time, and the bar for making it into the "buy again" category is damn high these days. Has been for years, really.

pastor_bob• 3 years ago

How many readily available American Porters are better or even comparable to the Anchor Porter? I can only think of 1 (Sierra Nevada) off the top of my head.

It's a sad that you can't just sell a Porter anymore. Have to throw banana and peanut butter in it or make it 15% alcohol to get accepted by the 'craft beer' aficionados.

jdmichal• 3 years ago

I've felt similarly for a while. It seems like all these smaller brewers start with an IPA, then maybe make something else later. Well, I don't like hoppy beers, and I especially don't like IPAs. I like malty dark beers like dunkels or Irish reds, and those are apparently way down on the "craft beer" clout list.

photonerd3• 3 years ago

If it’s not pretty much puréed & juiced hops or a fruit infused saison it seems the “craft” community hates it.

The craft beer community mostly seems to hate beer that is actually beer.

divbzero• 3 years ago

How about Deschutes’ Black Butte Porter [1]? It started regional but has been expanding distribution in recent years [2].

[1] https://www.deschutesbrewery.com/news-media/2021-02-08/how-i...

[2] https://www.deschutesbrewery.com/news-media/2021-03-22/more-...

sheepybloke• 3 years ago

I agree. When I went to SF Giants games as a 415 member, you could get Anchor Pilsners for $9. It was a good deal for a baseball game, but they were competing against more interesting local beers or better beers (imo) like Pliny the Elder. Their beer was good, but the hard part is that I would always choose something else to drink.

pbsladek• 3 years ago

I’ll miss you anchor porter…

hayd• 3 years ago

100%, that beer was great!

helios_invictus• 3 years ago

Anchor and Fritz Maytag were a real inspirations to a lot of early craft to microbrewery people. I've known a number of people who can say that the revitiliztion of Anchor was one of the reasons they started breweries..and their influence has influenced others.

MikeMacMan• 3 years ago

Ironically, back in the 90s Anchor Steam was just about the only good craft beer I could get in Japan.

symfoniq• 3 years ago

Won’t miss Steam, but Anchor Porter is quite good.

coffeebeqn• 3 years ago

Liberty ale was my first IPA and still holds a dear place in my heart. At least Sierra Nevada seems to be thriving still

softwaredoug2• 3 years ago

The pandemic has triggered / accelarated a lot of trends

One trend I wonder about is cutting back on drinking. From a health perspective, I see more and more health officials loudly saying no healthy amount of alcohol[1]. It's simply poison.

Not that I'm aggressively for any kind of prohibition, and don't very rarely drink, but I wonder if we'll see increased awareness and more people just deciding not to drink as much anymore.

With this awareness, and the "modest amount of alcohol are actually healthy" claims debunked[2], maybe the hipster / wealthy / yuppy crowd will turn more and more away from the many many microbreweries / wineries that have cropped up in the last few decades.

1 - https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...

Huberman has a great episode too - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkS1pkKpILY

2 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/03/31/moderate-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsIdaQhDjwo

sfpotter4• 3 years ago

Didn't the pandemic accelerate drinking, if anything?

softwaredoug2• 3 years ago

True, maybe at home, etc. Though I'm thinking more the kind of "going out" drinking at the new hip microbrewery.

Also we have SO MANY breweries/wineries/distilleries options etc... so I think there was already a bubble.

californical• 3 years ago

I wonder if it depends on demographic (almost certainly does).

Maybe the “hip” crowd is losing interest in microbreweries and drinking culture, while the “struggling” crowd has increased drinking. And the types of alcohol which appeal to each is different.

Totally hypothetical here, as I have no data behind this at all.

rubiquity• 3 years ago

Yes it did. Many are still on pandemic era drinking habits of drinking most week nights.

crazygringo2• 3 years ago

I think stopping drinking was a response to exactly that -- it got out of control, then people quit.

At least in NYC that's when we saw the first non-alcoholic "liquor" stores emerge. Because people still want a sophisticated treat to sip to mark the end of the day.

bob1029• 3 years ago

I believe it mostly just accelerated the thinking around drinking and why we do it.

Convincing yourself you don't have an alcohol problem when you are out with friends every night is one thing. Trying to accomplish the same persuasion when you are locked in your apartment with just your cat for months on end is much more challenging.

It would seem to me a person typically has 2 paths they can explore at that point: Go deeper into the rabbit hole, or GTFO.

edmundsauto• 3 years ago

I think it did both - seems like a barbell distribution. Medium drinkers became heavy drinkers, others drank less - but there was a change in the distribution. Lots more non-alcoholic options popped up as well, both for purchase at home but also a lot more restaurants list NA options for fancy drinks while out to eat.

codyb2• 3 years ago

I've certainly been moving back towards lighter beers... those IPAs are too strong. You think 5% to 6% isn't a big deal cause it seems so small, but it's a 20% increase in alcohol content. 5% - 7% is a 40% increase! If you're drinking pints, it's like adding half a shot to every beer you drink. It adds up quick.

cpursley• 3 years ago

Yeah, same here. I really only drink beer in the summer. Enjoy a good IPA but alcohol level is too high as well as calories.

ChainOfFools5• 3 years ago

I'm a little concerned about the phenomenon I've noticed on the shelves lately which is that every brand seems to be first, putting the ABV content in larger and larger font and a more prominent position on the label with each new offering, and that they are now starting to clock in at doppel and trippel and barley wine levels of alcohol on a regular basis. The number of casual drinking beers that have hit 10% or even 11% ABV which used to be an extremely exotic and limited availability product is insane.

the likes of Delirium tremens are now looking tame by comparison to some of these general market beers i.e. voodoo ranger and raging bitch.

krumpet• 3 years ago

Agreed. The older I get, the less I'm interested in drinking alcohol. When I do choose to have a drink, I'm definitely reaching for a Guinness (4.2% ABV).

asielen• 3 years ago

Anecdotally in SF it seems like the only places that haven't been shutting down are bars. I lost many of my favorite restaurants and coffee shops, basically all the bars except one is still open.

But almost no one orders Anchor.

alexanderscott• 3 years ago

You mean in 2023? So many of my favorite SF dives closed during or as a result of covid: lucky 13, hemlock, whiskey thieves, bachus kirk just to name a few

VohuMana• 3 years ago

I could definitely see this, I also wonder if this is why many breweries are scrambling to make non-alcoholic beers. The non-alcoholic beers have become so good IMO, I usually find myself reaching for one of those on a hot day rather than the real deal.

golemotron• 3 years ago

Yeah, I can't really tell the difference. I liked beer more for the taste than the buzz anyway.

pjot• 3 years ago

I hope this trend continues, they really are getting good. From a business perspective too it makes sense. Now people can drink all day long

nunez2• 3 years ago

The pandemic definitely triggered an uptick in "healthier" drinking options, specifically non-alcoholic beers (that are actually good now, hard kombucha and seltzers (that are usually just as alcoholic as beer but have fewer carbs so they are "healthy").

Athletic Brewing Company out of Stamford, CT has grown like gangbusters because of it (and because their beer is legitimately good). Even the big commercial breweries have embraced the trend (Bud Light 0.0 was the only beer you could buy at the World Cup last year, and the only NA you'll find at a lot of bigger restaurants are Heineken 0.0 or Dos Equis 0.0. They are good!).

This has created a lot of problems for taproom-only breweries, as they've had to pivot towards making seltzers (very easy to do for commercial breweries, but some brewers consider it morally wrong), making beers that don't taste like beer (peanut butter chocolate milkshake pastry stouts, anyone?), and/or opening a kitchen/restaurant (completely different business, super thin margins with high operational overhead) to draw patrons in.

As a result, lots of breweries have been merging or shutting down since COVID, and the new ones that have been opening are taproom/restaurants because it's simply not profitable to be a brewery with good beer anymore.

(Interesting fact: There were roughly 2,000 craft breweries nationwide back in the heydays of craft beer in 2010 or so. There are now over 8,000 breweries nationwide! However, the number of craft beer drinkers in the US has been flat since then and actually started falling before COVID started.)

As for me, I initially entered COVID drinking two pints of beer daily; usually heavy IPAs or stouts. Because this agitated my acid reflux to levels I've never experienced, I decided to cut back to a pint or two every other day, with NAs (or nothing) filling the gap.

I've also slowed the rate at which I drink beer so that I drink less (and get less tipsy; truth be told, I love beer but HATE getting drunk).

When I drink, I have a good-sized sip every ten minutes and drink water between sips. As a result, because it takes me 30-60 minutes for me to down a pint this way, I enjoy the beer more while drinking way less per session.

Regardless, Anchor closing is huge and very sad. It looks like Sapporo EEE'd them, which is kind of surprising since they weren't really a threat to their core business.

GenerWork• 3 years ago

Bud Light 0.0 was the only beer you could buy at the World Cup because Qatar has super strict alcohol laws.

necubi• 3 years ago

The trend isn't away from drinking, it's away from beer. Seltzers and other malt-based drinks have had huge growth in the past few years, mostly at the expense of beer sales, and liquor sales are up as well.

Slate's been doing a great series over the past week about these trends if you're interested: https://slate.com/tag/beer-package.

munificent2• 3 years ago

I wonder how much of this is the beer industry eating its own seedcorn by focusing more and more on super bitter IPAs that beer snobs love at the expense of more middle of the road palatable beers. The long term consequence of that plus beer snobbery looking down on light beers is that younger drinkers with sweeter palates just don't drink beer at all because the beer that is socially acceptable is too bitter for them and the beers they'd like get mocked.

So instead, they just drink White Claw.

fennecfoxy5• 3 years ago

Lmao, the microplastics and particulates from ever increasing pollution will get us before the alcohol does, imo.

Plus most people I know that drink craft beers have just 1-2 at a time, it's the people that drink piss/regular beers that I see having as many as they can, pint after pint.

dsr_• 3 years ago

127 years? Is it an overflow problem?

romellem• 3 years ago

Are there any others breweries that make a “steam” style beer that you’d recommend as a replacement?

I’ve always enjoyed Anchor Steam but never really found a suitable alternative.

missilepsilo• 3 years ago

I will miss that Xmas ale that comes in a magnum. Great to bring to a holiday party.

ceroxylon• 3 years ago

I kinda saw this coming after their ghastly label redesign with the sharp yellow and blue, it made it look like a completely different product on the shelf, and anyone who was inspired to try it due to the new label was most likely underwhelmed.

whartung• 3 years ago

I'm not a beer guy, but as I understand it many craft beers are actually made through contract brewers. That suggests that beer can be, well, "reduced" to a recipe that can be replicated. I've heard that Samuel Adams uses contract breweries, and, in fact, a fellow who used to work with us had his own private label that he went and got a bunch of cases brewed, made up a label, found a bottler, and sold locally.

Now, I know water quality is an important factor, but even then I've heard of pizza restaurants that have analyzed New York water (apparently an important aspect of New York Pizza) to the point of having it replicated (adding back proper mineral amounts, etc.).

So, I don't know how much of Anchor Steam is purely based on location.

If, however, it can be "just a recipe" suggests that it can be returned at any time if the corporate parent deigns it worthy to bring it back.

nemo44x2• 3 years ago

I'm not a beer guy, but as I understand it many craft beers are actually made through contract brewers.

Same thing with spirits like whiskey. There's massive distillery named MGP that makes a ton of whiskey but they don't market or sell any direct. They sell to companies that want to sell a whiskey brand. They're known as a "production contractor". This way you can bring a product to market but you don't have to vertically integrate the production of it.

xkgwkdmgjtx2• 3 years ago

I hesitate to post this hearsay accusation, but it hasn't been mentioned in this thread and it might be important to discuss.

I talked to Anchor employees after the news about stopping the Christmas Ale and stopping sales outside of California. They told me the writing was on the wall that Anchor would be closed down and sold for scraps. They were adamant that the root issue here is Sapporo mismanagement, not anything about Anchor being an unviable business. Public Taps alone makes good money and I'm pretty sure they have owned their brewing building for a long time. They asked me to boycott Sapporo.

Of course, laid off workers are usually disgruntled at their ex-employers, but nonetheless it's an important angle to consider. The other comment about Sapporo's plans for that San Diego brewery seem to bolster this perspective.

______• 3 years ago

I met a former Anchor brewer who left and moved to at a brewery in Flagstaff AZ two years ago, they seemed pretty unhappy back at Anchor.

kelnos11• 3 years ago

I don't mean to invalidate or deny this person's experience, but I think it's unavoidable that any business will have at least a few employees who aren't happy working there, for whatever reason. It doesn't have to mean working conditions are bad or that there's something wrong with the company, and it doesn't have to mean the employee is bad at their job or has unrealistic expectations; sometimes it's just not a good fit.

On the other hand, employees having the opinion that their parent company is mismanaging the business (while still sticking with them) is a little bit more compelling to me as being potentially true.

bagacrap2• 3 years ago

So why do these employees not bid on the business and make it a co-op?

CephalopodMD• 3 years ago

I went on a tour of their facility about a year ago. Really beautiful place with lots of history. I'll be sad to see it go.

As with most brewery tours, we got to try some of their beers afterwards. One of the ones I tasted was the best sour I've ever had in my life. I asked where I could buy it and they said they were never going to sell the stuff.

joshuaheard• 3 years ago

I loved this beer when I was in my twenties. My college-age daughter and her friends, however, don't even drink beer. They drink this fruit-flavored hard seltzers.

HDThoreaun2• 3 years ago

Really surprising to me how long it took for the seltzers and cocktail in a can stuff to take off. Especially among college age people my informal survey has around 70% of people preferring their flavor yet until like 5 years ago the only fruity beverage widely available was mikes hard lemonade. And not only do most young people prefer the taste, seltzers are much cheaper to make than beer and require much less expertise. I guess it was just a tradition is hard to break thing.

yamazakiwi6• 3 years ago

Maybe this has to do with bars wanting to sell cocktails to these consumers and they thought popularizing seltzers would lose them money? I'm not in the industry so I'm not sure how close of ties the Bar Industry has with Alcohol Companies but I'm sure there is a lot of lobbying back and forth.

dmoy• 3 years ago

IIRC it had a lot to do with figuring out a manufacturing process that involved brewing to be taxed as a malt beverage, instead of a hard liquor.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-tax-policy-gave-...

TillE• 3 years ago

Mike's Hard Lemonade fills basically the same ecological niche that cider does in the UK, and does it really well because American-style lemonade is great.

Canned cocktails are generally pretty bad, and hard seltzers are fine but does anyone really enjoy the flavor? I feel like they're just a convenient low-calorie way to get drunk.

annexrichmond• 3 years ago

From SFChronicle:

In 2019, dissatisfied workers successfully formed a union for the first time in Anchor’s history

lamontcg• 3 years ago

Entirely unrelated but I turned off support for DRM'd videos in firefox yesterday and this crappy news website now just has a firefox banner for "You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page" instead of having some video player desperately chasing me around the page trying to get me to play it.

stcroixx• 3 years ago

If their flagship had actually been a steam beer, I'd be sad, but as it was just a decent lager there are a billion replacements.

deadballcretin2• 3 years ago

Simply put, par for the course when it comes to what little of San Francisco's soul is actually left. Slowly dismantling the weird to make way for the boring.

Saporro has mismanaged this from the very start, they had no plan when they bought the company and will almost certainly turn to victim blaming and crying foul amidst their successful unionization effort in 2019.

jeffbee2• 3 years ago

The idea that in the absence of Anchor we will be at a loss for "soul" breweries is somewhat hilarious. Over my 40+ years of life the number of breweries in America has exploded 100-fold. In San Francisco and the immediate area craft breweries are almost a menace. There must be 5000 of them in California. If you insist that your beer be sourced from your immediate political jurisdiction, you could get beer from Fort Point Beer Co, a large and successful independent with statewide distribution.

deadballcretin2• 3 years ago

I'm talking about the city, not the brewing scene. The brewery is a staple of the city and it is a shame to see it shutter in such a fashion. Looking at the rest of the scene and not what the brewery represents is intentionally missing the point of what I was trying to say. The city is being dismantled, bit by bit, being replaced with facsimiles of what people think San Francisco is supposed to be instead of letting the city be.

zerocrates2• 3 years ago

There's a decent argument to be made that there's a qualitative difference between a 100+-year-old institution and a mid-2010s local brewery of which there are, as you point out, untold similar ones all over the country.

Of course Anchor didn't exactly maintain its own "soul" on the way down to this end, selling to larger owners and eventually foreign ownership, and more recently abandoning their old logos and packaging. So it's not totally playing fair hearkening back to their proud history and all that.

kelnos11• 3 years ago

I think it's sad that such an iconic brand is shutting down, but Anchor's "weird" actually made their beer a fairly boring product. There are much more interesting options all over the place, though, like everywhere else in the US, there are still too many IPAs, to my endless disappointment.

Meanwhile, I have two great small breweries within an easy walking distance of my home in the Dogpatch (not far from where Anchor is/was): Harmonic Brewing and Olfactory Brewing (the latter of which just opened a few months ago).

It's always a shame when an iconic, century-old brand disappears, but it's not like Anchor's beer was all that unique or interesting.

splonk4• 3 years ago

I've only been to Olfactory a couple times but as far as I'm concerned it's a massive improvement over Triple Voodoo. I do like Harmonic as well, it's just even farther out of my way than Olfactory. Basically the only time I ever went to Anchor was when I was walking home from Dogpatch and didn't feel like stopping by one of those other places first.

eduction• 3 years ago

Photo of Steve Jobs with an Anchor Stream c1984 https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/steve-jobs-dr...

trashface• 3 years ago

Sad news. I drank a ton of it back in the 90s (back then at many bars in CA, it was either that or Sierra, or else megabrew swill). But I generally liked both of them and still do. I did a tour of the brewery then and it was a fun time, and "sampled" plenty of good beer there too. At one point the tour guide asked a brewer what he was making and he said "Sierra Nevada Pale Ale" and everyone chuckled, as there was a rivalry at that time.

Steam is a lager beer which at least in the craft segment seems to have lost out to highly hopped IPAs (which are also often very high ABV) in the US. Anchor did have liberty IPA which was pretty good but perhaps not really exceptional; hard to stand out when everyone is doing the same thing. I still think Steam is pretty unique flavorwise, you can really taste the Cascade hops they use whereas other brewers often tend to drown them out. Never really found another lager like it.

They also made the "small beer", which was nice low alcohol beer (~3%) derived from the brewing of the (much stronger) old foghorn. I haven't seen it in stores for a long time though as I now live on east coast and its harder to get anchor here.

nlanier• 3 years ago

Interesting discussion here, I enjoyed reading it. I was sad to learn of Anchor’s demise today. It’s rare a thread appears on HN that’s relevant to my work! If anyone is curious about the current state of the beer market from someone who earns a living at it I may be able to provide some insight.

fragmede• 3 years ago

https://defector.com/anchor-brewing-was-san-francisco is another look at the situation.

tguvot• 3 years ago

i am kind of late to discussion, but. i just walked through beer isle in safeway and in this hellscape of beer flavored carbonated water and triple hazy sour watermelon ipas ,anchor beers (lager, pilsner, beer) are the only one that are drinkable by those who don't love local craft madness.

they will be missed

SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

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