San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co., often called America’s first craft brewery, announced in July plans to cease operations after some 127 years, just 6 years after it was acquired by Japan’s Sapporo Holdings Ltd.
Locally, several metro Atlanta craft breweries have closed already this year, including Anderby Brewing, Orpheus Brewing and Second Self Beer Company. I’ve been friends with Orpheus founder Jason Pellett and Second Self co-founder Jason Santamaria since they first opened their respective breweries in 2014. That all of these craft breweries have closed a few months apart seems both bittersweet and cruel — especially because they somehow managed to survive the pandemic.
Anchor Steam was the first craft beer I ever tasted, offered up after a friend brought a few six-packs back from San Francisco. I rediscovered it when I moved to Atlanta in the mid-1980s. The Euclid Avenue Yacht Club in Little Five Points kept the stubby bottles in the cooler, and when I walked through the door, my bartender friend Faylynn Owen would quickly crack one and hand it to me.
With Anchor, I guess I should have known that things would never be the same when Sapporo decided to take on a major redesign of Anchor’s packaging and branding in honor of the company’s 125th anniversary. Said to reflect a “retro-modern aesthetic,” the blue and yellow cartons and labels were like the worst idea of a too-cute design firm.
More recently, I drank Anchor Steam on draft at the bar at Manuel’s Tavern, where it proved to be a fine accompaniment to Braves baseball and a plate of Buffalo chicken wings.
I also joined some beer friends at Brick Store Pub to have an Anchor Steam keg party, and take another sensory stab at what makes the malty, amber-colored ale-lager hybrid so special.
We all agreed that it was a bit more hoppy than we remembered. But we loved the woody-minty aroma and bitter flavor of the Northern Brewer hops, considered the signature of California Common, aka steam beers. And of course, that’s the style then-owner Fritz Maytag wanted to revive in 1965 with Anchor Steam.
What else will we miss? Certainly Anchor Liberty Ale, a dry, bitter beer that was first produced in 1975, and became a regular offering in 1983. And Old Foghorn, a big cellar-aged barley wine ale with notes of toffee, fruit and pine.
For me, though, it’s Anchor’s seasonal Christmas Ale, an ever-changing, but always spicy and earthy, beer for the holidays. In 2023, Anchor decided it would no longer be distributed outside of California. Now it seems it’s gone for good, along with the final end of another once-great brewery.
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