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SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoA month ago the story was limiting national distribution etc....... that escalated quickly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301974
- jimmychoozyx 3y ago[flagged]
- bink 3y agoThis has nothing to do with politics: > “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?
- brigadier132 3y agoGuess you missed > especially in San Francisco San Francisco had some of the most restrictive covid policies in the country.
- jkubicek 3y agoI'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.
- jedberg 3y agoAnd 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).
- athinggoingon 3y agoCompanies that provide store fronts that law abiding customers living in those neighborhoods can't live without.
- brigadier132 3y agoEveryone left, im sure san francisco factored that into the denominator and didnt use statistics from before covid
- jkubicek 3y agoToo many people were shoplifting beer from their gift shop and SF police refused to do anything about it. Anchor had no choice but to shut down. /s
- athinggoingon 3y agoDo you expect these corporate announcements to contain anything but PR and euphemisms?
- jimmychoozyx 3y agoExactly. One of the cardinal sins in statistics is: Self-reports are biased. 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 :))
- bink 3y ago"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- emodendroket 3y agoI 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.
- jimmychoozyx 3y agoI am mostly referring to the exodus of citizens who find California can no longer sustain them economically. As a result, they're moving in substantial proportions to conservative states. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_exodus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_exodus There has also been a significant exodus of businesses. "An exodus of California businesses is gaining steam, with the number of departing establishments nearly doubling from 2012 to 2019" [2] https://www.ocregister.com/2023/06/05/california-business-departures-rising-study-says https://www.ocregister.com/2023/06/05/california-business-de... From [2] ( June 5, 2023 ) "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"
- bink 3y agoYour 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. Despite Musk's political nonsense claims about moving the Tesla HQ, he's still expanding the Fremont factory: https://www.tesla.com/fremont-factory https://www.tesla.com/fremont-factory 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's GDP has also continued to rise, with only a brief blip at the beginning of 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/187834/gdp-of-the-us-federal-state-of-california-since-1997/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/187834/gdp-of-the-us-fed... 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 https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4687
- bbor 3y agoWhat 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
- mjfern 3y agoYou’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.
- 542354234235 3y agoAlso, 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".
- emodendroket 3y agoMotivated reasoning.
- farzinadil 3y ago[flagged]
- emodendroket 3y agoCalifornia will survive the loss of a brewery.
- farzinadil 3y ago[flagged]
- ChatGTP 3y agoI'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 :)
- farzinadil 3y agoThose people are delusional. They should see how the doom loop worked out for detroit.
- stephencanon 3y agoDetroit is now a fun and affordable city.
- bpodgursky 3y agoWhere do you live?
- mc32 3y agoSo only four decades to go before it’s fun again? Works for long term planning. In the meantime it won’t be fun for locals.
- tsunamifury 3y agoIt is not. It is a city that he lost 3/4 of its population, GDP and is still spiraling down. It has huge abandoned districts. It is hyper-violent. It has an urban revival that has failed in numbers by population and revenue. But sure, for now it’s “fun”.
- yttribium 3y ago"Fun" if you like living in a PvP zone
- maxiepoo 3y agoI'll be surprised if none of the bigger beer companies ends up buying it for the brand and history alone. But maybe it doesn't have as much name recognition as I thought.
- garciasn 3y agoAnchor 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.
- astura 3y agoThey are already owned by a big company - Sapporo. I've heard that Sapporo has been trying to sell it for couple years now. Nobody's buying.
- olliecornelia 3y ago[flagged]
- hooverd 3y agoAB seems to be doing just fine with one.
- suby 3y agoIt'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.
- HappySweeney 3y agoThe employee unionization was likely a result of the cost-cutting measures being implemented on their backs, meaning the business was already failing.
- kasey_junk 3y agoThey had to be famously saved by a rich guy as a vanity project earlier in their life. Perhaps it’s time to admit it’s just not a viable product, especially now that the US beer scene is so expansive.
- wl 3y agoFamously 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.
- flyinghamster 3y agoAnd 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.
- hooverd 3y agoSome* 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.
- astura 3y ago>the taproom always had customers. 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.
- WiseWeasel 3y agoA shame they weren’t able to adapt to modern beer tastes. As long as I can remember, I've thought of them as the mediocre beer I’ll begrudgingly drink only if all other options are exhausted.
- the_common_man 3y agoI thought anchor steam is pretty good. What beer do you like?
- WiseWeasel 3y agoI 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.
- ginko 3y ago>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. Do you like Munich dunkels?
- WiseWeasel 3y agoBland in a flavor complexity sense, and malty as in too sweet. I guess a better way to say it is too sweet for its sourness/bitterness.
- grouchomarx 3y ago>the mediocre beer I’ll begrudgingly drink >I guess Sierra Nevada
- greesil 3y agoI got to do a tour of the place, it was really fun. It's located near Potrero Hill. I can't say anything about their cost structure but having a location that's in SF probably has some disadvantages. But, there are a lot of other craft brewers in the bay area that are quite good. Drake's, Faction come to mind. You don't have to go much further afield to find Bear Republic, Russian River Brew Co. I would not consider Lagunitas craft, maybe someone else with more beer lore could weigh in.
- ryaneager 3y agoThere’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.
- stickfigure 3y agoThe comically small town of Winters has two - Berryessa Brewing and Hoobies. Both great. Closer to Dixon/Davis, Ruhstaller is a blast - especially on weekends.
- greesil 3y agoTime to go out for a beer tour!!
- kevinmchugh 3y agoThe only rigorous definition of "craft" is the one the brewer's association maintains, and they tweak it frequently to keep Sam Adams in. Lagunitas was a craft brewer by that definition until they sold to Heineken. There was a period of a few years where a number of old-guard regional craft brewers sold to international conglomerates. For my money while the brewery may not be craft anymore, the beer still is. Or, if someone calls Lagunitas IPA a craft beer I'm not going to correct them - I might if it was blue moon or leininkugels, say.
- krustyburger 3y agoIt’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.
- last_responder 3y agoWell Stone is now off the buy list.
- codyb 3y agoIs Sapporo a bad company?
- ChainOfFools 3y agoThankfully 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.
- jerhewet 3y agoGreen Flash used to be amazing. Not any more. https://www.brewbound.com/news/tilray-acquired-green-flash-and-alpine-for-5-1m-dissolves-anheuser-busch-inbev-jv https://www.brewbound.com/news/tilray-acquired-green-flash-a...
- everybodyknows 3y agoDon't see how shutting down an unsuccessful operation makes Sapporo an unethical actor. Regarding Stone however, there's this, predating its acquisition by Sapporo: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/08/21/national-brewer-goes/ https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/08/21/national-brewer-goes/
- hospitalJail 3y ago[flagged]
- ryaneager 3y agoIs 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.
- Eisenstein 3y agoYou 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.
- lobf 3y agoSo edgy
- sparrish 3y agoHonest question: how did this SF brewing company survive prohibition? If it really is 127 years old, it must have existed during prohibition. How was it not shut down then? I'm curious.
- sithadmin 3y agoA 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.
- floren 3y agoThe grape growers dehydrated grape juice and sold it in bricks as "instant juice", with instructions: "After dissolving the brick in a gallon of water, do not place the liquid in a jug away in the cupboard for twenty days, because then it would turn into wine." https://grapecollective.com/articles/prohibitions-grape-bricks-how-to-not-make-wine https://grapecollective.com/articles/prohibitions-grape-bric...
- semi-extrinsic 3y agoSlightly less than 10% of US breweries surcived the 13 years of prohibition, mostly through a) being large companies that owned a lot of assets and real estate, and b) successfully pivoting into anything from ceramics production to non-alcoholic foods like ice cream/tea/coffee/juices to the sale of yeast and malt syrup that people could use to homebrew beer. And prohibition had been a long time coming, some companies like Anheuser-Busch had been preparing for several decades.
- samstave 3y agoSome 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.
- acheron 3y ago> Anchor was established in San Francisco in 1896 and was the country's first craft brewery. So what definitions are being used here to claim this? Yuengling is quite a bit older, for example.
- ryandamm 3y agoYeah 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.)
- acheron 3y agoMakes sense, thanks.
- awithrow 3y agoYuengling'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
- pinot 3y ago
- domh 3y agoThis 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
- schnable 3y agoProps for being the original craft beer, but I never liked it.
- yamazakiwi 3y agoIt's not the craft beer even though the article states such
- gohwell 3y agoThis beer always reminds me of NOFX - Scavenger Type
- dpifke 3y agoI miss the days when you could get a pint for 13 quarters. And as someone who left SF almost a decade ago, I just checked and was very surprised to see that Bottom of the Hill is still open.
- flyinghamster 3y agoI 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.
- splonk 3y agoI believe the distilling operation was separated from the brewing operation when Sapporo acquired it (I think maybe they had to remove the still through the roof with a crane?). I used to drink some with a guy who worked on the distilling side and tried a few of the Old Potrero variants, but none of them were really to my taste. Certainly unusual and worth trying, though.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoWhy aren’t we celebrating the market efficiency?
- nemo44x 3y agoSort 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.
- hyperbovine 3y agoMany this really sucks. Many a cold summer day did I spend sipping a pint of Anchor at Kennedy's on Columbus, at the Albatross in Berkeley, and at various other water holes around the city and in the East Bay. Feels like my 20s just died.
- Neff 3y agoI 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.
- tristor 3y agoThis doesn't surprise me. As somebody who got deep into craft beer, I have always thought of Anchor Steam as being relatively mediocre. They were likely a breath of fresh air well until the 1980s, but my the early 1990s there was a burgeoning US craft brewing revival that had a solid brewery (and in most cases better than Anchor) in every US state. They also aren't the only old craft brewery in the US, generally. It's unfortunate, but operating in one of the most expensive places in the US isn't something that's compatible with being mediocre in a highly competitive market.
- dbcooper 3y agoIt's an excellent beer of its type, and IMO of any beer type. It may be subtle, but not everything has to be an big hoppy IPA, or a sweet NEIPA etc. Do you also think that Pilsner Urquell, Jever, or Budvar are mediocre?
- AnotherGoodName 3y agoI agree that it is an excellent beer for it's type but steam beer as a style is dying and for good reason. Very few like that type. The steam beer process was literally created as a way to cheaply make a lot of beer.
- tristor 3y agoAnchor 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pbsladek 3y agoI’ll miss you anchor porter…
- hayd 3y ago100%, that beer was great!
- helios_invictus 3y agoAnchor and Fritz Maytag were a real inspirations to a lot of early craft to microbrewery people. I've known a number of people who can say that the revitiliztion of Anchor was one of the reasons they started breweries..and their influence has influenced others.
- MikeMacMan 3y agoIronically, back in the 90s Anchor Steam was just about the only good craft beer I could get in Japan.
- symfoniq 3y agoWon’t miss Steam, but Anchor Porter is quite good.
- coffeebeqn 3y agoLiberty ale was my first IPA and still holds a dear place in my heart. At least Sierra Nevada seems to be thriving still
- softwaredoug 3y agoThe pandemic has triggered / accelarated a lot of trends One trend I wonder about is cutting back on drinking. From a health perspective, I see more and more health officials loudly saying no healthy amount of alcohol[1]. It's simply poison. Not that I'm aggressively for any kind of prohibition, and don't very rarely drink, but I wonder if we'll see increased awareness and more people just deciding not to drink as much anymore. With this awareness, and the "modest amount of alcohol are actually healthy" claims debunked[2], maybe the hipster / wealthy / yuppy crowd will turn more and more away from the many many microbreweries / wineries that have cropped up in the last few decades. 1 - https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-... Huberman has a great episode too - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkS1pkKpILY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkS1pkKpILY 2 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/03/31/moderate-drinking-alcohol-wine-risks/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/03/31/moderate-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsIdaQhDjwo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsIdaQhDjwo
- sfpotter 3y agoDidn't the pandemic accelerate drinking, if anything?
- softwaredoug 3y agoTrue, maybe at home, etc. Though I'm thinking more the kind of "going out" drinking at the new hip microbrewery. Also we have SO MANY breweries/wineries/distilleries options etc... so I think there was already a bubble.
- californical 3y agoI wonder if it depends on demographic (almost certainly does). Maybe the “hip” crowd is losing interest in microbreweries and drinking culture, while the “struggling” crowd has increased drinking. And the types of alcohol which appeal to each is different. Totally hypothetical here, as I have no data behind this at all.
- rubiquity 3y ago
- dsr_ 3y ago127 years? Is it an overflow problem?
- romellem 3y agoAre there any others breweries that make a “steam” style beer that you’d recommend as a replacement? I’ve always enjoyed Anchor Steam but never really found a suitable alternative.
- missilepsilo 3y agoI will miss that Xmas ale that comes in a magnum. Great to bring to a holiday party.
- ceroxylon 3y agoI kinda saw this coming after their ghastly label redesign with the sharp yellow and blue, it made it look like a completely different product on the shelf, and anyone who was inspired to try it due to the new label was most likely underwhelmed.
- whartung 3y agoI'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.
- nemo44x 3y ago> I'm not a beer guy, but as I understand it many craft beers are actually made through contract brewers. Same thing with spirits like whiskey. There's massive distillery named MGP that makes a ton of whiskey but they don't market or sell any direct. They sell to companies that want to sell a whiskey brand. They're known as a "production contractor". This way you can bring a product to market but you don't have to vertically integrate the production of it.
- xkgwkdmgjtx 3y agoI 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.
- ______ 3y agoI met a former Anchor brewer who left and moved to at a brewery in Flagstaff AZ two years ago, they seemed pretty unhappy back at Anchor.
- kelnos 3y agoI 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.
- bagacrap 3y agoSo why do these employees not bid on the business and make it a co-op?
- CephalopodMD 3y agoI went on a tour of their facility about a year ago. Really beautiful place with lots of history. I'll be sad to see it go. As with most brewery tours, we got to try some of their beers afterwards. One of the ones I tasted was the best sour I've ever had in my life. I asked where I could buy it and they said they were never going to sell the stuff.
- joshuaheard 3y agoI 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.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoReally 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.
- yamazakiwi 3y agoMaybe this has to do with bars wanting to sell cocktails to these consumers and they thought popularizing seltzers would lose them money? I'm not in the industry so I'm not sure how close of ties the Bar Industry has with Alcohol Companies but I'm sure there is a lot of lobbying back and forth.
- dmoy 3y agoIIRC it had a lot to do with figuring out a manufacturing process that involved brewing to be taxed as a malt beverage, instead of a hard liquor. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-tax-policy-gave-us-white-claw.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-tax-policy-gave-...
- TillE 3y agoMike'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.
- 3y ago
- annexrichmond 3y agoFrom SFChronicle: > In 2019, dissatisfied workers successfully formed a union for the first time in Anchor’s history
- lamontcg 3y agoEntirely unrelated but I turned off support for DRM'd videos in firefox yesterday and this crappy news website now just has a firefox banner for "You must enable DRM to play some audio or video on this page" instead of having some video player desperately chasing me around the page trying to get me to play it.
- stcroixx 3y agoIf their flagship had actually been a steam beer, I'd be sad, but as it was just a decent lager there are a billion replacements.
- deadballcretin 3y agoSimply 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.
- jeffbee 3y agoThe 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.
- deadballcretin 3y agoI'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.
- jeffbee 3y agoAs 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.
- kelnos 3y agoYou'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.
- eduction 3y agoPhoto of Steve Jobs with an Anchor Stream c1984 https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/steve-jobs-drinking-anchor-steam.244858/ https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/steve-jobs-dr...
- trashface 3y agoSad news. I drank a ton of it back in the 90s (back then at many bars in CA, it was either that or Sierra, or else megabrew swill). But I generally liked both of them and still do. I did a tour of the brewery then and it was a fun time, and "sampled" plenty of good beer there too. At one point the tour guide asked a brewer what he was making and he said "Sierra Nevada Pale Ale" and everyone chuckled, as there was a rivalry at that time. Steam is a lager beer which at least in the craft segment seems to have lost out to highly hopped IPAs (which are also often very high ABV) in the US. Anchor did have liberty IPA which was pretty good but perhaps not really exceptional; hard to stand out when everyone is doing the same thing. I still think Steam is pretty unique flavorwise, you can really taste the Cascade hops they use whereas other brewers often tend to drown them out. Never really found another lager like it. They also made the "small beer", which was nice low alcohol beer (~3%) derived from the brewing of the (much stronger) old foghorn. I haven't seen it in stores for a long time though as I now live on east coast and its harder to get anchor here.
- nlanier 3y agoInteresting discussion here, I enjoyed reading it. I was sad to learn of Anchor’s demise today. It’s rare a thread appears on HN that’s relevant to my work! If anyone is curious about the current state of the beer market from someone who earns a living at it I may be able to provide some insight.
- fragmede 3y agohttps://defector.com/anchor-brewing-was-san-francisco https://defector.com/anchor-brewing-was-san-francisco is another look at the situation.
- tguvot 3y agoi am kind of late to discussion, but. i just walked through beer isle in safeway and in this hellscape of beer flavored carbonated water and triple hazy sour watermelon ipas ,anchor beers (lager, pilsner, beer) are the only one that are drinkable by those who don't love local craft madness. they will be missed