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.
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.
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.
This seems to be a conclusion in the beverage world as well, the craft beer wave has broken and people are just trying to drink something that tastes like what it says on the label.
I home brew beer and the instinct is to make something crazy, but I get sick of my own experiments and double sick of paying 18$ for a 4 pack of someone else’s experiments. I could never stand being told that hop burn was a sign of craft beer, it’s a sign of a shit process and you should never have those flavors in your beer.
I’ve actually been shocked to discover hard kombucha with some fruit juice is great. I still drink my beer, but this stuff is light, refreshing, and it’s 7% so it gets the job done.
Anchor’s taste changed to me sometime after the acquisition, I liked it in years past and there was something off to me now.
Homebrewer here too. I agree. I like some experimentation but also like some "normal" stuff. I also don't like the really expensive odd stuff in the store. I've also begun to dislike the really plain stuff in the store.
Even if my beer is a little different every batch, I think I prefer it. It's fun to grow your own hops and even grow/malt your own grain.
At small scales, a rule of thumb is that it's harder to brew beers with lighter/subtler flavors. You can hide a lot of minor brewing mistakes behind an IPA or a heavy stout. Not so much with something like a pilsner.
To add on, in addition to needing more consistency and skill to brew something light in flavor, it also more difficult to brew a lager (which a Pilsner is) than an ale -- the yeast involved are different, and the fermentation process is generally longer (more opportunity for stuff to go wrong) and more temperature sensitive (more opportunity for stuff to go wrong.)
It’s not hard to brew a Pilsner, and brewing your own beer is rewarding, but the light German styles are the hardest to really improve on. If you just put some quality ingredients and decent temp control fermentation at a Pilsner, you’re going to get a super great beer judged against some regular commercial offerings, and a good beer in general. To get better that that, look into LoDo brewing if you want to go down the rabbit hole.
If you like to strive for perfection, the german styles will scratch that itch for you.
Edit: I will add that brewing Pilsner or Helles will literally never impress your friends. You’ll get a shrug and a “oh that’s good” out of them when you’ve put your heart and soul into driving out one little off flavor from your ferment that no one else can taste but you. IPA is basically the polar opposite.
I think the whole world is off axis if Pliny is a straight forward beer. Maybe we were all better off when Russian River was sending it out for us to buy in lots of 2 bottles to a local store that you had to call every day and check to see if they got any.
Pliny adapted to shifting tastes too, they reduced the grassiness and switched to bittering hop extracts to get a more mass appeal flavor and reduce waste with flower hops that would also soak up more wort. If you aren't constantly adjusting in beer you'll go the way of Anchor.
20th century labor movement: We want improved working conditions and more jobs to exist, let’s bargain in pursuit of that goal
21st century labor movement: we’d consider it a success to destroy all of the jobs altogether rather than accept less than 100% of our demands (which may or may not be economically feasible).
It sure incentivizes eliminating human labor as fast as possible.
That's not exactly being generous to the unions. The corporations fight unionization at every turn, so the unions need to play aggressive to get the kinds of wins that keep them being supported. At the same time, the corporations have taken the position that unionization is such an existential threat that they'll happily close a profitable location if it unionizes, in order to make an example of them, raising the stakes for unionization even higher. Meanwhile, the government will happily back the bigwigs at every turn.
The result is that good faith negotiations between capital and labor are now impossible. If the government would do its job, and seriously punish companies and investors (think less "angry email" and more "Old Yeller") who engage in illegal union busting, then unionization wouldn't be a massive risk for the employees, and more modest demands could be seen as acceptable.
The best way to 'fight' unionization is to offer a great employment package, so that the workers are reasonably happy. Workers know that unions come wih a lot of disadvantages. And unions often use heavy-handed methods to create a union shop, like effectively open elections and shaming.
Unions in the US are on the ropes. Union membership is down, and companies have loads of resources and help to stymie unionization efforts. Frankly, unionizing at all is a successful unionization effort at the moment, since it shows other people it can be done. Can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I know this is just one example, but public school teacher unions don't seem to be doing so great, seeing how teaching is still the example always brought up as the most tragically underpaid profession.
Sure, a union isn't a magic bullet that fixes all problems, but I know school teachers in some very different districts in the US, and their pay is universally awful for the amount of time they put in, and some of them even end up having to buy their own school supplies, out of pocket, because their classroom is way underfunded. I guess we could argue that, without the unions, things would be even worse, but I still think teachers unions have mostly failed their members.
On the flip side, police officer unions seem to be doing pretty great, negotiating reasonably high pay, and helping to shield their members from accountability for wrongdoing.
Like you said it depends on the sector. I have a lot of friends that work for the state and it seems like their unions are doing great. Six figures, guaranteed raises, 2 Days in office per month, and what seems from an outsider to be like a 20 hour work week
The recipe changed after the acquisition by Sapporo. Fans of the original Anchor Steam didn't like the new taste and stopped buying. So it faded into the background with the other ~3-5 domestics being served at a given bar.
Lots of people talking out their ass here, clearly none of them spend any time in SF dives talking to other patrons.
Do you have proof that they changed the recipe/process. My wife and I have long suspected this, but I believe officially they denied any change.
The rebrand was an absolute disaster of marketing. You have a 125 year old brewery with an old-fashioned looking logo, and you throw that all out for a more modern design that looks like every other beer on the shelf that got their designer off of fiver.
Just forming a union should not be a measure of success. If it ultimately led to shutdown of the division because it was unprofitable, I would argue it was a pretty unsuccessful effort.
I haven’t seen anyone suggest unionization has had anything to do with it, in fact I’m going to groundlessly state that it probably is the only reason they lasted this long.
I was just pointing out the obvious anti-union bias of just mentioning they were unionized as if it had something to do with them failing.
Sounds like they got bought by a conglomerate who closed them down. Normal capitalistic practice unrelated to the existence or lack of existence of a union.
I don't have the numbers... but I'm going to assume that regular beer drinkers drink the popular light beers or already have a craft beer they like and spend less money trying new products. It took contentious political media to get die-hards to stop drinking their favorite light beer. That's how ingrained these brands are. It's harder to sell a new Amber Ale than a Juicy Mango/Dragonfruit IPA. These 2 beers serve different personas and the beer industry is focusing on growth over providing new products to their base.
I think this is right. When I was in my 20s I was really into beer. Now I'm older and I split my time between the usual light beer culprits when I'm drinking out and enjoying a few craft favorites when I'm drinking in and gaming/doing hobbies. Also when a four pack of 16oz cans is approaching $20 (or exceeding that) I'm less likely to be exploratory because who the he'll wants a fridge of rejects they don't like.
I (rarely) homebrew, for fun, but when it comes to beers in the fridge I have so many great local options to choose from (here on the south shore of MA, near Cape Cod), it's ridiculous: Second Wind, Stellwagen, Mayflower, Timberyard.... typically canned just a week or two before purchase. A few times a year I'll make a trip to Treehouse (worth it), otherwise the local package stores are well-stocked. I do remember enjoying Anchor Steam and IPAs back in the day (as a big upgrade from shitty mass-produced lagers), but my palate evolved and my preference for the best and freshest brew simply rules out generic bottles from the opposite coast.
My understanding is that this is kind of the pattern of the beer downturn. The huge operations are doing okay, shifting around amongst their sub-brands, introducing seltzers, etc. And the hyper-local stuff is still doing well it seems. But the "pretty big" craft brewers that went nationwide, they're facing the brunt.
Those light beers are also low ABV, which is ideal for warm summer days where to just want something refreshing without getting plastered. A simple tasting 4% beer works great for that. A complex, bitter 12% double IPA? Not so much.
I’d much rather drink an amber ale on a nice warm day than yet another IPA.
Yeah, I'd call normal anywhere between 3.5 - 5%, with session beers being anything < 3.5%. Anything above 5% is strong and where, 15 years ago, beers used to top out at around 6.5% in your average supermarket (Carlsberg Special Brew aside), nowadays beers at 8 and 9% are commonplace, although perhaps not to the extent they were 5 - 8 years ago.
A lot of these are just too much, and too weird (as I and many others have commented), for day to day drinking. Nowadays I mostly drink session beers because I normally have to worry about driving, getting up early, or functioning in some at least semi-useful way later in the day.
Yeah, it's basically undrinkable. It was a bit of a staple at 6th form parties in the early 90s because it was cheap and strong, although I always struggled to get it down. I did buy a can many years later to try for a laugh as a fully fledged adult (is it really as bad as I remember, etc.?)... and couldn't finish it. Just awful.
Worth noting that most 'hard seltzers' like whiteclaw are still brewed sort of like beers for tax reasons. Since brewed drinks have less excise on them than premixed drinks.
You could argue that the alcohol in it was fermented, but all alcohol is fermented, aha. Apparently WC base alcohol is a pure spirit "5 times distilled from corn & gluten free".
I still only love sours; I'm a little gay cocktail freak usually, but sour beers have always seemed kind of special to me - I love the flavour and the history of using wild yeast (I think there was a river somewhere with the right type of yeast where they just used to leave fruit next to the river for the yeast to collect).
But unfortunately there doesn't seem to be as many sours around in the UK now, when I was still in NZ we have tonnes, but now all I find in the UK is IPAs and "DIPA"s etc. So boring.
Belgium is definitely worth a visit if you like interesting beers, there are countless places, but I'd have to recommend Delirium Café (a honestly confusing maze of various beer halls) but for good weather "Little Delirium" is great too, smaller location but with nice outdoor seating.
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.
I'd like to see what '23 the numbers look like before declaring it a contracting market. Sales by volume for the entire category are indeed down, but somewhere between 2-3%, and that is still likely attributable to the crash starting in 2020, when it was actually illegal to serve or even order beer in many places. (To this day, there are still aggressive measures taken against breweries, brewpubs, and taprooms, like this extrajudicial order that is crushing the business in New Jersey: https://www.nj.gov/oag/abc/downloads/LimitedBrewerySpecialCo....)
Still, imports are up, and regionals and crafts are up as a percentage of total beer. The small operations that weren't entirely destroyed are still in the process of coming back online. I'm not convince the empirical decline is the market at work and not external forces.
He's an economist that covers this for the Brewers Association. Based on the data, it's not looking good. Some of it is released in public reports and presos, others are member-only resources.
Here's a report from the TTB that shows the contraction:
Oh my gosh. Section 1 of that about tours. What a ridiculous ordinance. I assume all this is in there to protect some other class of business that lobbied for it, right? Like bars trying to prevent breweries from competing?
You can be a bar or restaurant that serves alcohol (retail consumption license).
You can also be a brewpub (restricted brewery license), which comes with production limits and requires the above.
You can be a brewery, which mostly makes and sells beer to retailers and distributors to consume elsewhere, but might have some tasting events (limited brewery license).
New Jersey strictly limits the number of liquor licenses of different types. Limited brewery licenses don't count against these limits: it's expected they're mostly selling their goods to other licensees.
It might be protectionism, but more likely it's just an effort to regulate alcohol that doesn't take into account the changes in the craft beer scene in the last couple of decades.
> more likely it's just an effort to regulate alcohol that doesn't take into account the changes in the craft beer scene in the last couple of decades.
This isn't a law. It's an order that was issued just 3 years ago.
A bill to undo it--which should not even be necessary given it's not legislation--was passed unanimously by both houses of the state legislature. The governor is sitting on it and hasn't commented.
> which should not even be necessary given it's not legislation
Lawmakers empower regulators to make ordinary rules without specifying every detail in laws. Sometimes lawmakers don't like what regulators do, though, and choose to exercise more direct oversight.
I don't know. It seems a mix of traditional and innovation does well. Yuengling seems to be a good example of a small brand becoming regional and now almost national. They have their traditional brews and have added a few new ones.
Grew up in PA and love seeing Yingers blow up, but I bet their success is largely due to the same reason we loved them back in the early 2000s: they brew a tasty no-frills lager at a good price.
Seems a lot of the brewing industry chased fads for 20 years.
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).
Yeah, that was the weird thing. I visited their tap room a few times here and there (I live fairly close), and some of their selections were truly different and interesting and good. But you couldn't get them anywhere else. Meanwhile, I hardly ever go for an Anchor beer when in a bar, as there are always more interesting choices. I wouldn't call myself a beer connoisseur, even. Seemed like shooting themselves in the foot.
> [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.
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.
I love porters but they're getting hard to find. Every supermarket is wall-to-wall IPAs. I assume they know what sells, so apparently that's what the market wants right now. You can't make a living brewing porters.
I would be a lot more disappointed with this turn of events if I had access to their porter. But the ubiquitous steam beer was never one of my favorites.
Totally agree. The craft beer industry needs to stop with all this IPA nonsense. It’s absurd how hard it is to find anything but yet another weird IPA.
If the craft beer industry is shrinking, this is one large component. Stop with the nonstop IPA’s. There is way more beers than just IPA’s.
I work at a craft beer bar, in general folks want live fresh beer...I pour 1 stout for every 50 Ipas I pour. We have the option but folks love their pale ales and ipas. Anchor would just go bad on our rotation...a freshly brewed pilsner, i'll sell a bunch. A blaise steam beer that isn't "fresh" isn't winning any body over. That said I'm a big fan of anchor porter, the general public is not.
I do wonder how much of this phenomenon is just self-reinforcing. Sell a large variety of IPAs, and only a small number of other choices, and sure, people will tend to gravitate toward IPAs. Add on top of that heavy marketing of IPAs over other options, and people will gravitate toward them.
I think this is a lot of it: people order IPA because they think they know what it is and because they're everywhere. It's the John Smith's of the 2010s/20s.
I went through a phase of drinking a lot of different IPAs, and it was fun, but now I'm looking at other options. The IPA thing has just been overdone and there are only so many iterations of weird IPA formulae that I can deal with.
I will still drink IPA if that's the only ale/craft beer on offer in the bar... and that really goes back to your point about self-reinforcement.
pale ales are frankly a lot more palatable than IPAs imo. When I looked back at the IPAs I liked, I realized most of them weren't actually IPAs, they were just pale.
but yeah I'm tired of being assblasted by overhopped west-coast IPAs. The ones I've liked, it turns out to be east coast. Even then, I'm tired of being hit over the head with hazy, juicy, mosaic, fruity, citra, etc. Very very rarely do I see these hops used effectively - Oddside Citra Pale Ale is an example of an exception.
Everyone rants about how great guinness is, but the draught cans taste incredibly watered-down to me for some reason. Extra Stout and Foreign Stout are fine and I have to imagine that's what guiness tastes like for EU customers.
Yeah that's my favorite of the guinesses. Extra is an acceptable example of a stout, drinkable but I've had better. But Foreign is actively good and I'd put it near the top of my list. My local grocery store was clearing them out, 4paks for $7.50 and it was a nice little turn of events.
The Anniversary Stout is another great one but that was a limited return.
Bell's Kalamazoo Stout is my One Beer For The Rest Of My Life though, just absolutely perfect in every way, as is customary for Bell's. I still enjoy some Fat Tire in the summer, and Bell's does a fantastic Czech Pilsner, and their Flamingo Fruit Fight pomegrate sour is actually fantastic too, but Kalamazoo Stout is the one I could never live without.
Sad that Bell's has gotten bought out too, it's a trend recently where macros are buying up micros so they don't have to do the work of building their own products and branding. The macros know they're in trouble, nobody under the age of 40 is actively seeking out a budweiser or coors these days. A few of them are acceptable (Milwaukee's Best Ice, Rolling Rock, Genesee Cream Ale, etc) but most of them I'd rather drink something else than suffer through Budweiser or whatever. Calories count too much these days for me to waste them on something I'm not enjoying the taste of.
Goose Island is coors iirc, Sierra Nevada got bought a couple years ago iirc, Blue Moon is macro, etc.
And things are better now! I feel like 10-15 years ago it truly was wall-to-wall IPAs, and if you wanted something else, you had maybe one or two choices. Now at least it seems like the IPA craze has died down a bit, though they're still well over-represented.
I personally don't like IPAs at all, and it's really frustrating. Most of the time I end up going for a cocktail or wine since the beer selection at most bars is still pretty IPA-heavy. I do enjoy that a lot of more beer-focused places stock sours and stouts, both of which I love, but I feel like most bars don't sell them, or much of them.
I really love IPAs myself, but I'm very tired of hazy styles (hazy, NEIPA, etc). My favorite hop varieties are from NZ and I can tell you they have been doing some excellent stuff with IPAs there for over a decade. West Coast and NZ collabs are also awesome.
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.
I'm a bit surprised by this. I think a lot of my disappointment with Anchor stems from the fact that people raved about, and feted them, whereas to me they were always at about the level of a fairly mediocre British ale (sorry). But then, on the other hand, if what you're used to is Bud, Coors, etc.[0], then they're absolutely going to be a breath of fresh air, so it sort of blows me away to hear that it was so unpopular at parties.
I guess it all depends on point of view and I absolutely don't want to come off as gatekeepy about what good beer is because, as I said in my original comment, the last 20 years US brewers have really pulled it out of the bag with a ton of absolutely great beers that can stand amongst the best. I forget exactly when but I guess I had Anchor Steam Beer for the first time somewhere between 2005 and 2009, just as the craft beer movement was starting to build up steam.
Back in 2005 a friend and I took a roadtrip partway across the US, including a stop at Salt Lake City. Irony of ironies, that's where we had the best beers on the trip, in a "private members club" (literally just a bar). I particularly enjoyed a local brew called "Polygamy Porter" - a really lovely beer, and better than anything I've had by Anchor in the years since. No idea if it's still in production, although I hope so.
[0] Of all the mass produced beers in the US I do have quite a big soft spot for Blue Moon, to the point that if a bar offers it, because it's relatively uncommon in the UK, I'll often order it in preference to craftier offerings, particularly if those craftier offerings are mostly IPAs or APAs.
the same reason as any market needs to innovate : consumer trends and goals shift with the times.
Let's take the most run-of-the-mill common bolt in the world as a product example : the 200 year old company that has changed to sell that run-of-the-mill bolt online w/ fast delivery and with a companion app has innovated without a product change.
innovation doesn't imply a product change, it implies that a company is necessarily flexible to meet the shifting demands of consumers. This can be done in other ways than shoving newer and shinier products out the door.
Not the beer, but the company. Even places like Guiness come out with new stuff like Baltimore Blonde to increase their line up and appeal to a bigger market for better scale.
It doesn’t have to necessarily, however, it does have to in inverse proportion to how much their product appeals to the market presently. If your popularity and sales, for instance, take a 50% hit, you’d better introduce some new product lines. That doesn’t have to mean abandoning your original recipe product.
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).
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.
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.
It matters because Anchor has been an iconic independent brand for over 125 years, and was only more recently bought by a giant multinational brand. I'm not surprised a local news outlet mainly identifies Anchor by their longevity and nostalgia value, and doesn't put much emphasis on the (IMO sad) fact that they haven't been independent since 2010.
I personally didn't care for the limited beer choices they made available to bars, but some of the things available in their tap room in SF were really good. It's a shame to see them go, though I think more in the "sign of the times" way than the idea that I'll actually miss their beer.
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.
Portland had Henry Weinhard's at the time, and I believe toward the late'80s at least that Sam Adams existed, and was actually a real craft microbrewery still at that time. And we could also add Rolling Rock and Yuengling in Pennsylvania to that as well. both also still around though against the standards of today or even a decade ago are barely distinguishable from mass market domestics. also some candidates that I think those familiar will question my taste as craft microbreweries, but they were alternatives, like Rainier up in Vancouver Wa.
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.
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.
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.
Only if you are using to the definition of craft promoted by the Brewers Association. There are many other uses of the term "Craft Beer" that use other definitions often based on the style of beer, and having nothing to do with ownership.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That style of comment does bother me though. It implies some kind of authority or consensus. "It is important to note" should just be read as "I (and people as enlightened/ informed as myself) think".
Just tell me your opinion, and I'll evaluate it based on it's content. You telling me that it's Important only puts me on alert for some kind of bias.
EDIT: to clarify, if I'm doing my job correctly as a critical reader, I can't trust a commenter to be speaking for anyone but themselves. Phrasing like "it's important to note" serves to divert from that, because it implies that it's not the commenter's opinion, they're just spreading the gospel.
Their assertion may be correct, but I'm doing it wrong if I take their word on it just because "it's important to note." Which is why I would prefer they leave it out, because I still need to do the work whether they tell me to or not, and telling me not to makes me suspicious.
I like the affectations. It shows other users that noting something of relevance is good user behavior. "Is your comment actually worth noting??" is a good consideration to keep HN high quality. Some users will misuse it but that's very transparent so I believe it's worth mentioning when you believe something is worth mentioning (haha)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I really despise this about the American beer industry. Your typical tap list these days is 8 IPAs, 1-2 dIPAs, 4 sours, something that contains coffee, some other weird shit (cucumber göse e.g.), and like one normal everyday lager or pilsener that isn't making some sort of personality statement and pairs well with food. Worse, this appears to be catching on among trendier bars in Europe, even in places like Munich and Vienna that have had spectacular beer for centuries and should know better.
They're there because they sell, and they sell because people like them. IMO one pilsner or lager is enough; what's the point of having a whole bar full of different beers that all pretty much taste the same? They certainly don't justify the premium pricing that these bars often charge.
Germans think their own beer is the best in the world. To the rest of us, it is reliable but boring. It's not just an American thing, Scandinavia and the UK also have a much greater variety of styles and tastes. I think all that's happening in Munich and Vienna is people are getting more exposure to this variety and are realising they like it.
As an American, I find German lagers to be just as varied and interesting as American IPAs. I didn't realize this until I moved near a pub with multiple rotating taps of German lagers.
Later, I went to Oktoberfest, and tried multiple fresh lagers a day for four days, which only convinced me further.
I am convinced, in general, that we don't notice subtle variations within styles of (beer, wine, music, etc) until we are repeatedly presented with multiple options within thay style. Of course it'll seem like all lagers taste the same if you only have one good lager to try at a time.
I visit the Great American Beer Festival nearly every year, and there was definitely a period where everyone was all-in on relatively extreme beers: ipas, sours, bourbon-barrel aged stouts. Last year, I saw a refreshing trend towards pilsners, lighter lagers, and ambers. I feel like GABF is a bit of a bellweather for these things - west coast craft beer bars will probably take a few years to catch up, but I think we're headed in the right direction.
> Your typical tap list these days is 8 IPAs, 1-2 dIPAs, 4 sours, something that contains coffee, some other weird shit...
Yup. I live close to a bunch of breweries in Seattle. The taplists of the two nearest are:
Stoup:
// IPAs:
Mosaic Pale Ale
Citra IPA
Chur to Twelve IPA
Rainbow Bubbles IPA
Nothing Crazy IPA
Simcoe Studies IPA
Stoup Dog IPA
Sir Dank A Lot IPA
Space Garden IPA
Paraderade IPA
Easy A IPA
// Everything else:
German Style Pilsner
NW Red
Imperial Porter
Cervecita Mexican Lager
Bavarian Hefeweizen
What a Tart Raspberry Sour
Bale Breaker:
// IPAs:
Field 41 Pale Ale
Topcutter IPA
Bottomcutter IIPA
Daybreak Pale Ale
Hazy L IPA
Frenz IPA: Sierra Nevada
Long White Clouds IPA
Evenfall Hazy IPA
Bubba's Brew IPA
Bale Breaker Why the Ek-Not IPA
Bale Breaker Tropical Penguin
// Everything else:
Bale Breaker Pilsner PNW Pilsner
Dormancy Stout - Coffee
Raging Ditch Dry-Hopped Blonde Blonde Ale
Bale Breaker Pasketti Sauce Pilsner - Italian
YOXI Lime Agave Ranch Water Hard Seltzer
And note that even the "everything else" category can't escape the "hop the fuck out of everything" trend. Stoup's pilsner is described as "spicy hop aroma and refreshingly dry, hop-forward finish". The Red "provides a distinctly Northwest hop character".
I get it, Cascadia grows a lot of hops. But some of us just want to taste beer and not win some macho contest to see who can choke down the most IBUs per fluid ounce.
Heh, I wish there were four sours at most bars; that's what I usually find most interesting and tasty (I also enjoy porters/stouts, but rarely see much of those these days). Most bars I see don't even have sours, and if they do, it's usually only one or two, at most.
I was never the biggest beer drinker, but the lack of choice (and flood of crappy IPAs over the past couple decades) has only pushed me farther toward cocktails and wine.
You can also get the Makku Makgeolli from supermarkets now and it's quite sweet. And I also saw some other sweeter beers. I'm not a big megahops fan, so being able to have alternatives to IPAs is nice.
That's how they lost me for sure. I can go to a local bar or microbrewery and see a huge beer on tap selection, but they're all bitter artsy stuff. It's nothing like 20 years ago when there was actually a pretty broad range of flavors on the menu. Reminds me of the old Ford quote "you can have any color you like as long as it's black".
Seltzers are also basically no empty calories. I feel like millennials (like me) and gen Z are increasingly aware of this, we don't care about the alcohol, but we do care about drinking liquid sugar or liquid bread.
And seltzers are great cause many are naturally sweetened, no artificial sweeteners either, whether they're bad or not is still up for debate I suppose.
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.
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.
He must have had you pegged for a sucker. When bums spend their own money they are strictly economical. That means handles of vodka, fortified wine, or (maybe) something like Steel Reserve.
Or he's just a market savvy who understands his demographic. Ask your typical hipster beardo to gift you a handle of vodka and you're probably going to see the backside of an iPhone as he suddenly turns away to answer a very important call.
But ask for a borderline craft brew with ironic graphic design themes on the can and you might get shown some semblance of mutual respect as a fellow man of taste and culture who has thoughtfully given him a guilt-free excuse to go in the store and help himself to some of the same.
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).
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.
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.
> a lot more restaurants list NA options for fancy drinks while out to eat.
I've noticed this as well, as a few of my friends don't drink, or drink very little. Even just ~5 years ago, I think it was pretty rare to see a dedicated non-alcoholic section on a cocktail menu, with several interesting, flavorful options. But now it's... well, not quite standard, but pretty common, at least where I live.
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.
Can confirm, that's how it went for me and at least a few friends who I've talked to about it. I went from rarely drinking to heavily drinking to now drinking even more rarely. I let it get way too out of control (mostly in frequency, nothing life-destroying or dangerous to anything/anyone but my body potentially) and even after admitting it was an issue it took a while before I kicked it. Glad I did. It made me look at drinking in a whole new light, especially about just how pervasive it is in society. The joke I've heard a number of times before along the lines of "It'd never get approved if it was introduced today" feels pretty apt. Even something like marijuana seems many times safer than alcohol.
Good for you on cutting down. Alcohol can slowly increase and turn into a drinking problem. Years ago I started having a beer after work and it turned into two over time then every day. Now I may grab a lower abv beer on the weekend but the entire situation could have turned easily into a long term drinking problem.
Try your local health & wellness shop. (you know: the place you get non-FDA supplements, expensive toothpaste, and anything Himalayan salt)
Mine has had a non-alcoholic wine + spirits section growing steadily over the past 12 months from a couple random bottles, to a full floor-to-ceiling section of 40+ options.
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.
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.
Because Qatar has super strict alcohol laws and Bud has an exclusive sponsorship deal with the World Cup. So Bud Light 0.0 is the only intersection of those two requirements.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
They really did use steam beer process fwiw. Big stainless steel swimming pools in open air and unrefrigerated. It wasn't completely outdoors but that's a fair change to the process. I think it's reasonable to consider this as steam beer.
Honestly I always saw the California Common/Steam beer style as more marketing than a true style. In my head I grouped them in with amber lagers. I Totally agree that Anchor Steam was mediocre.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No they didn't, they own the trademark term "steam beer" and only went after the people using the trademark, not people using the same process using the generic term "California Common."
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
>Other breweries do cans. Easier. Cheaper. Tastes better. Keeps the art fresh.
Canning has significant upfront costs that mean that for small operations it's not easier or cheaper. At the scale of Anchor, it's viable, but does require a significant investment in retooling.
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.
>always thought of Anchor Steam as bland, malty, and mediocre, on the same low level as Fat Tire, to name a comparable brand.
So was it bland or malty? Those seem mutually exclusive to me.
I'm generally a fan of steam beers/california commons because of the very dark malt forward flavor. It was one of my favorite beer styles to brew and drink.
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
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.)
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
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
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.
> 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.
Eh. A lot of people have very distinct expressed preferences for one mass market lager over another ("I only drink Coors!")and then in blind taste tests completely fail to pick them apart at any better a rate than chance. I'm always skeptical when people tell me one adjunct beer is better than another.
I'm not saying you're for sure wrong, certainly some beers are distinguihsable from some other beers, but you might consider having someone do a blind taste test with you some day just for fun. I've made a number of friends angry when they tell me they like one particular vodka and I do a few triangle tests and show them that they can't actually tell one from another.
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.
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.
Some* craft beer is expensive. My extremely non-scientific survey found that Anchor Steam is roughly the same price as Shiner, or Boulevard Wheat, and only a couple dollars more than a six pack of Budweiser. It's no Founder's KBS prices, but that beer fills a different niche anyways.
The craft brewers that are all making the same N-times-hopped IPAs might die off, and for the better.
I know the owners of a local craft brewery. When they opened 7 years ago it was ONLY the taproom. Nowadays their money is almost entirely in distribution, taproom is only like 5% of their sales.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You're using the brewing scene as a proxy for the city, so it's completely fair to dispute your claim about the brewing scene, and extrapolate that to the rest of the city.
SF has been having problems -- big problems -- sure, but there's still a lot of good here.
I'm bummed Anchor is disappearing, but not because I particularly liked their beer. Maybe iconic brands shouldn't stick around if they don't really bring all that much interesting to the table anymore.
As a long-time resident I think that most of the city needs to be scraped flat and redone, so this does not particularly bother me. Nostalgia does not befit any place.
Anchor is being dismantled by a corporate entity ten thousand miles away in Japan and arguably its dismantlement was foretold, and inevitable, when it was acquired. The time to grieve over it was when they sold it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.
Enough of this nonsense. Those who remember history are doomed to relive it. We're going to build the future, man, and it's going to be better, and we'll remember our past in our museums. The world matters. The present matters.
> The obstacles the U.S. faces in ramping up production can be seen at the Scranton plant.
> The factory — built for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad just after 1900, when the city was a rising coal and railroad powerhouse — has produced large-caliber ammunition for the military going back to the Korean War.
> But the buildings are on the National Historic Registry of Historic Places, limiting how the Army can alter the structures.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> I feel like they're just a convenient low-calorie way to get drunk.
Well yea, but for a lot of people that's what beer is too, and when given the choice between light beer and seltzer they prefer the seltzer.
Canned cocktails like cutwater have gotten incredibly popular in the last year or so here. I suspect because they're 15% alcohol and the same size as a beer so many people can just drink one and be good for the night.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> According to a press release, the brewery has been facing challenging economic factors and declining sales since 2016.
Well before this "doom loop" shit was coined. Seems like a very long, slow loop if that's the case.
Also, it seems like you created your account to talk about the doom loop on this thread. Edit: no, correction, your account is older but this is the only comment?
I feel you are moving the goal posts. The "doom loop" narrative only emerged in the last few months.
Lots of problems existed for a long time. Affordability is one. Smash and grab at tourist spots is another. Homelessness. Drugs in the tenderloin. All old problems. Then there are the pandemic problems, and relatedly, lack of demand for office and retail.
But there are a bunch of false narratives that SF suddenly became mad max in the last 3 years. That what the people who bring "doom loop" into literally every SF discussion seem to be on about. I suspect the person I replied to is thinking of this.
I've heard quite a few SF people say they welcome this, once all the rich dudes leave it might actually return to being a fun and affordable city again. Let's see :)
San Francisco has been a boom and bust town since the beginning, with countless "doom loop" stories. The reality is that it's a desirable city. If we're in a true bust, prices will begin to drop--and those places are quickly filled up with people who can now afford to live here (again). We're not witnessing a drop in demand per se, we're witnessing a decreased demand at the high-end (this is a good thing! it's run out of control for the last decade.) combined with commercial real estate investment that won't lower leases because it devalues their properties and puts their RE investment underwater. (Ultimately, their hands will be forced, of course, which will lead to much lower cost commercial real estate in a highly desirable city with better affordability for homes... again, this is a good thing.)
The problem in Detroit was there was no price low enough to get people to live there when there were so many places with similar amenities and better quality of life nearby. In SF, the second housing prices fall, they're scooped up instantly. People move across the country/world to live in SF even when the job market has been terrible in the past. (There's a lot more to SF than a job.) I'm not saying San Francisco could never fall, but we're nowhere near that reality.
While I think the people who think this is a good thing are out of their minds, Detroit had entirely different issues, and probably is not a good example for what could happen to SF in the worst case.
1. Detroit has none of the natural advantages SF does.
2. Detroit was hollowed out largely because of the white flight that drove the tax base to the suburbs.
3. Detroit was uniquely built as a highly car friendly city, which meant that once the jobs were gone, there was no good reason to be within Detroit itself.
4. Detroit had no political power at the state level, and if anything, was held up as a punching bag for the rest of the state. This is unlikely to be the case for SF, which is likely to have political support at all levels.
I'd say the worst case scenario for SF is probably a city like Philadelphia, which also went through bad years, but has rebounded and has become a pretty great city in many ways, even if it doesn't have the cachet of its past. And I'd imagine that would be the worst case scenario for SF, and the more likely case would be something much better than that, even if all the wealthiest people left SF.
Exactly. The reality is that San Francisco has lost a lot of people over the last decade, even though our population has grown. We've displaced people through a crisis of (lack of) affordability as wealthier folks have flocked to the city. If we view SF's success purely through population growth, that looks like success, but in practice, it has been a truly devastating decade for so many who loved this city. The demand to live in the city may be just as high today, but the demographics may look less rich. As housing prices slowly come back down to something vaguely closer to earth, some of those people come back -- and new residents eager to take advantage of the quality of life SF offers at a lower price point move in. It's a cycle that's a microcosm of American boom/bust mentality, but SF always comes through with being a beautiful/unique/storied/creative/walkable/dense city.
It's pretty lame to put out a one sentence implication that unions are the reason for the downfall of this 127 year-old business without, you know, any actual proof or data or argument for that being so. The only sentence in the actual article hinting at why they closed links it to falling sales starting in 2016, and the general state of the economy.
You’re just regurgitating conservative talking points that don’t align with reality. The California economy is the largest in the USA, by a significant margin, and its economic growth over the last 15 years far outpaced the U.S national average. California is on track to overtake Germany as the world’s 4th largest economy.
Also, don't Californians move to other states for the same reason expats move to Costa Rica or Thailand? Because they are much richer than the locals, so they can have an outsized lifestyle for their money. Coming in and outbidding for the nicest houses certainly doesn't sound like refugees fleeing a collapsing government. I don't understand how people can see that and think people are "escaping".
> “We recognize the importance and historic significance of Anchor to San Francisco and to the craft brewing industry, but the impacts of the pandemic, inflation, especially in San Francisco, and a highly competitive market left the company with no option but to make this sad decision to cease operations.”
You really think California is "collapsing economically" or are you just trying to inject your politics into something unrelated?
"Companies that have moved their U.S. headquarters out of state in recent years include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, Charles Schwab, CBRE, Toyota and Tesla.
Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Florida ranked as the top destinations for relocating California establishments, the data shows.
The findings resemble those in the Hoover Institution’s latest business exodus study, released last September. The Stanford University institution reported that at least 352 business moved their headquarters out of California from 2018 through 2021, including 11 Fortune 1,000 companies.
“Headquarter relocations are accelerating substantially, with no sign of reversing course,” the Hoover Institution report said. It blames the departures on a business environment “that ranks near the bottom of all U.S. states.”
"RELATED: Tesla’s Elon Musk follows 687,626 Californians who moved to Texas"
Your own links suggest that peak migration was in 2021, when California lost 360,000 people. That's less than 1% of the population.
You're also ignoring the fact that Anchor Steam is owned by Sapporo and has been for the last 6 years. This isn't a decision being made by people working in the factory who are angry that they had to wear masks or upset about a rise in homelessness.
The most common reason cited for normal companies to leave California is the cost of living, especially housing and labor costs. If the economy were collapsing those costs would be decreasing.
California saw historic budget surpluses from 2021 to 2023: "As a result, in the last two years, the state saw historic budget surpluses—including $47 billion in 2021‑22 and $55 billion in 2022‑23.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4687
A corporation is telling you about that same corporation? You can expect some bias ;)
I find it quite telling this attitude of "If someone tells you something, it's got to be true! Especially if it's a corporation!!" quite telling, regarding those folks who are saying "Hey you can't criticize California! You conservative!"
It's like... Really? California is some gleaming pinnacle of perfection? It's with great hesitation that I say this: Californians... get out-- and ask people in other states how they feel about California & its citizens-- and then go right back and stay in your confinement zone lol (I kid! I kid! Dang plz don't ban me :))
I moved here a few years ago, so I don’t think I’m that lacking in perspective, and I think it’s nicer than other places I lived in a lot of ways. Certainly not seeing reasons for panic.
And lowest rates of death, especially for the density. A choice was made to trade off companies (which can be replaced) for lives (which can't be replaced).
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but I'm having trouble seeing how covid policies from a year ago (strict or not) would still affect a manufacturer that ships beer everywhere in the US.
What do you mean by this? This national brand shut down because of rising rates of theft at CVS? And do you not think fairness is important? Don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s taking a strong anti-fairness stance, lol.
P.S. I think “Europinize” is more accurate, and it seems to be working ok for them, not to mention America’s richest and most productive state. The global drumbeat of social and economic progress will beat on, and the angry few will be left behind
Is it alcohol that’s killing society or societies lack of support for addiction that’s killing? It is a disease, you need treatment and can’t fix it yourself.
You don't have to feel bad for them, but even if all the breweries shut down that wouldn't make alcoholism go away, and it would also deprive people who drink responsibly of something they enjoy.
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.