Anchor's Away
July 12, 2023 11:04 AM Subscribe
Shockwaves in US Craft Brewing as Sapporo, the current owners of San Francisco's Anchor Brewery, have announced they're closing the industry stalwart. This comes after last month's announcement of reduced distribution footprint and the discontinuation of their traditional holiday beer "Our Special Ale". The brewery was one of America's oldest, founded in 1896 and a staple of San Francisco.
The brewery's resurrection under Fritz Maytag is cornerstone founding myth one of the modern "good beer" movement with Fritz's last minute acquisition in 1965 of the nearly bankrupt independent American brewery that produced something other than "pilsner".
Fritz's rescue is often credited as the birth of American Craft Beer with his example directly inspiring Jack McAuliffe's New Albion and Ken Grossman's Sierra Nevada Brewing. Frtiz sold Anchor Brewing in 2010 to Keith Greggor and Tony Foglio (Griffin Group - former executives of Skyy Vodka). Griffin would later sell the brewery to Japan's Sapporo Brewing in 2017.
(This is the latest news in an industry undergoing business contractions/shakeups, beer consumption reductions, and cultural reckonings as they try and push beyond the "white guy with a goatee" demographic - although not terribly successfully)
The brewery's resurrection under Fritz Maytag is cornerstone founding myth one of the modern "good beer" movement with Fritz's last minute acquisition in 1965 of the nearly bankrupt independent American brewery that produced something other than "pilsner".
Fritz's rescue is often credited as the birth of American Craft Beer with his example directly inspiring Jack McAuliffe's New Albion and Ken Grossman's Sierra Nevada Brewing. Frtiz sold Anchor Brewing in 2010 to Keith Greggor and Tony Foglio (Griffin Group - former executives of Skyy Vodka). Griffin would later sell the brewery to Japan's Sapporo Brewing in 2017.
(This is the latest news in an industry undergoing business contractions/shakeups, beer consumption reductions, and cultural reckonings as they try and push beyond the "white guy with a goatee" demographic - although not terribly successfully)
I know that business aren't immortal (e.g., I still miss Pete's Wicked Ale *sniffle*), but it feels wrong that Sapporo bought this historical nameplate, then shrugged and let it crash.
Recently in Minnesota, a brewery named August Schell picked up a beloved brand, Grain Belt, and added it to their lineup pretty much unchanged.
I wish Sapporo themselves would sell the rights to Anchor's beers so we wouldn't lose the Christmas Ale, at the very least!
posted by wenestvedt at 11:15 AM on July 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
Recently in Minnesota, a brewery named August Schell picked up a beloved brand, Grain Belt, and added it to their lineup pretty much unchanged.
I wish Sapporo themselves would sell the rights to Anchor's beers so we wouldn't lose the Christmas Ale, at the very least!
posted by wenestvedt at 11:15 AM on July 12, 2023 [9 favorites]
My understanding of the recent trajectory of this company is:
Company unionizes. (Yay!)
Sapporo purchases company.
Sapporo undergoes automation effort to undermine the Anchor union; automation dramatically damages productivity in the factory.
Sapporo ends production of the annual Christmas beer.
Sapporo ruins Anchor's once-beautiful logo.
Sapporo shutters company.
Not sure if that chronology is 100% accurate, but it all smacks of union-busting to me.
There's also a lesson in here about acquisition, I suppose. I love Anchor Steam. But Anchor Steam is not a special beer. There's no reason for Anchor to be on a grocery store shelf in, say, Missoula or Philadelphia or Kalamazoo. It's sort of lager-ish but not totally lager-ish but not quite like the other non-lager but light-colored craft beers that people sort of buy at random at the grocery store these days. It's a product no one asked for. It's good but most things are good enough for most people. People are great that way.
But as a regional beer, it ruled! If you took a trip to San Francisco, it was in every establishment you went to, and it was a nice, inexpensive local beer with an attachment to its city and a very nice logo and a history.
It was a great California beer and an unnecessary national/global product. But anyway my guess is, again, union-busting.
posted by kensington314 at 11:16 AM on July 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
Company unionizes. (Yay!)
Sapporo purchases company.
Sapporo undergoes automation effort to undermine the Anchor union; automation dramatically damages productivity in the factory.
Sapporo ends production of the annual Christmas beer.
Sapporo ruins Anchor's once-beautiful logo.
Sapporo shutters company.
Not sure if that chronology is 100% accurate, but it all smacks of union-busting to me.
There's also a lesson in here about acquisition, I suppose. I love Anchor Steam. But Anchor Steam is not a special beer. There's no reason for Anchor to be on a grocery store shelf in, say, Missoula or Philadelphia or Kalamazoo. It's sort of lager-ish but not totally lager-ish but not quite like the other non-lager but light-colored craft beers that people sort of buy at random at the grocery store these days. It's a product no one asked for. It's good but most things are good enough for most people. People are great that way.
But as a regional beer, it ruled! If you took a trip to San Francisco, it was in every establishment you went to, and it was a nice, inexpensive local beer with an attachment to its city and a very nice logo and a history.
It was a great California beer and an unnecessary national/global product. But anyway my guess is, again, union-busting.
posted by kensington314 at 11:16 AM on July 12, 2023 [34 favorites]
I was literally thinking yesterday, for the first time in years, that I'd love to have an Anchor Steam some time soon. What a bummer.
posted by saladin at 11:17 AM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by saladin at 11:17 AM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Damn. I just heard distribution was ending out of California but didn't realize it was totally over for them. Been drinking Anchor Steam for years. And though the "macroeconomic climate" etc surely has a role here, ultimately it's hard not to see what happened as a total fumble by management.
Here you have a beloved, historic craft beer (plus seasonal brews) that at the very least everyone in the state likes to buy. You can't turn that into a profitable business? It does kind of sound like they didn't want the trouble of a unionized small brewery acting as troublemaker in their global operations and so just kind of let it fail.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:22 AM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Here you have a beloved, historic craft beer (plus seasonal brews) that at the very least everyone in the state likes to buy. You can't turn that into a profitable business? It does kind of sound like they didn't want the trouble of a unionized small brewery acting as troublemaker in their global operations and so just kind of let it fail.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:22 AM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Everybody say it with me: employee-owned co-op.
posted by gauche at 11:25 AM on July 12, 2023 [41 favorites]
posted by gauche at 11:25 AM on July 12, 2023 [41 favorites]
It's almost like giant companies shouldn't be allowed to gobble up smaller ones.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:31 AM on July 12, 2023 [36 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:31 AM on July 12, 2023 [36 favorites]
Not that I monitor brewing news but I knew something was fucky when I saw what had been done to the formerly beautiful labelling.
Ontario used to import Liberty Ale which became a favourite for special occasions. Visiting family in California around the holidays, I always looked forward to the seasonal brews. What a callous series of decisions by Sapporo
posted by Evstar at 11:32 AM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Ontario used to import Liberty Ale which became a favourite for special occasions. Visiting family in California around the holidays, I always looked forward to the seasonal brews. What a callous series of decisions by Sapporo
posted by Evstar at 11:32 AM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
is the villain Sapporo alone or are the original owners also culpable having sold it to them and no doubt banked some solid cash?
posted by philip-random at 11:34 AM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 11:34 AM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
I lived in San Francisco for 11 years and never (or at least exceedingly rarely) drank Anchor Steam. Sierra Nevada was the local beer for me. And then it was Bear Republic's Racer 5, or anything from Speakeasy Ales & Lagers.
Bummer that it is closing, though, and particularly due to union-busting tactics by Sapporo, a company with which I never previously had a problem.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:40 AM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Bummer that it is closing, though, and particularly due to union-busting tactics by Sapporo, a company with which I never previously had a problem.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:40 AM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
I wouldn't put the blame on Fritz. He fought long and hard to bring that brewery to it's iconic status. (Plus he's one of those Maytags, so money isn't an issue for him.) He sold when he was done with the brewery and wanted to focus on the distillery.
Griffin and Sapporo on the other hand, can go jump in a mash tun. Anchor was always an interesting case - they were absolute traditionalists and held on to the model of "this is our lineup and it is what it is" well past the date that other breweries began moving away from a "core 4" to more rapid releases because that's how Fritz liked it. Griffin really started to push Anchor in the direction of more SKUs, while also firing a good portion of the sales/marketing staff. Bad move.
Sapporo coming in and trying to update and automate that glorious old German copper brew system was a mistake driven by $$
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:43 AM on July 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Griffin and Sapporo on the other hand, can go jump in a mash tun. Anchor was always an interesting case - they were absolute traditionalists and held on to the model of "this is our lineup and it is what it is" well past the date that other breweries began moving away from a "core 4" to more rapid releases because that's how Fritz liked it. Griffin really started to push Anchor in the direction of more SKUs, while also firing a good portion of the sales/marketing staff. Bad move.
Sapporo coming in and trying to update and automate that glorious old German copper brew system was a mistake driven by $$
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:43 AM on July 12, 2023 [8 favorites]
Man, this is so sad. I will really miss Anchor Steam, even though it's been nearly impossible to get around here for years. One of our local breweries occasionally makes a great California Common that mostly scratches the itch, but they don't make it very often.
I'll always remember The Thirsty Scholar in Somerville, whose $3 pints of Anchor Steam were always a treat at lunchtime next to a plate of steak tips (which I also miss).
posted by uncleozzy at 11:43 AM on July 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'll always remember The Thirsty Scholar in Somerville, whose $3 pints of Anchor Steam were always a treat at lunchtime next to a plate of steak tips (which I also miss).
posted by uncleozzy at 11:43 AM on July 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
is the villain Sapporo alone or are the original owners also culpable having sold it to them and no doubt banked some solid cash?--philip-random
Well Fritz Maytag resurrected the historical brand using some of his family's Maytag fortune back in 1963, and then sold it when he was in his 70s to a Vodka investment company that planned to expand it, so I don't think you can blame him.
I don't know why the Vodka company decided to sell it to Sapporo. In any case, that's when the attempts at automation happened and then unionization two years later, and now, here we are.
Sapporo also bought San Diego's Stone Cold brewery. I wonder how well things are going there.
posted by eye of newt at 11:44 AM on July 12, 2023
Well Fritz Maytag resurrected the historical brand using some of his family's Maytag fortune back in 1963, and then sold it when he was in his 70s to a Vodka investment company that planned to expand it, so I don't think you can blame him.
I don't know why the Vodka company decided to sell it to Sapporo. In any case, that's when the attempts at automation happened and then unionization two years later, and now, here we are.
Sapporo also bought San Diego's Stone Cold brewery. I wonder how well things are going there.
posted by eye of newt at 11:44 AM on July 12, 2023
Anchor Steam has been riding the “we invented craft beer!” wave for over two decades while 100s of other breweries big and small stomped it into oblivion. And they never got into the realm of “remember when…” nostalgia that keeps other somewhat mediocre brands like Pabst still around.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:46 AM on July 12, 2023
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:46 AM on July 12, 2023
In Ontario we had Lakeport brewery
In 2003 it had less than 2% market share.
Under a new CEO, Teresa Cascioli, they blindsided the major brewers by selling at a buck a beer and proudly proclaiming union made
Their market share jumped to 11% in 2006.
They were eventually acquired by a major brewery in 2007.
Who 3 years later laid off the entire union staff and demolished the Lakeport brewery.
Offers to purchase the brewery were declined and it fell to the wrecking ball.
Lakeport delenda est.
posted by yyz at 11:48 AM on July 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
In 2003 it had less than 2% market share.
Under a new CEO, Teresa Cascioli, they blindsided the major brewers by selling at a buck a beer and proudly proclaiming union made
Their market share jumped to 11% in 2006.
They were eventually acquired by a major brewery in 2007.
Who 3 years later laid off the entire union staff and demolished the Lakeport brewery.
Offers to purchase the brewery were declined and it fell to the wrecking ball.
Lakeport delenda est.
posted by yyz at 11:48 AM on July 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
Back in the early aughts, one of my favorite bars in Austin served Anchor Steam. There was nothing like clocking out from work on a sweltering August evening and heading over to that bar, finding a table in a dimly lit corner, and unwinding with an ice cold bottle of Anchor Steam and a pack of Camel Lights. (You see kids, in those days we smoked indoors and wore onions on our belts...)
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:49 AM on July 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:49 AM on July 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
God damn it.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:55 AM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:55 AM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
But Anchor Steam is not a special beer. There's no reason for Anchor to be on a grocery store shelf in, say, Missoula or Philadelphia or Kalamazoo.
...
Sapporo coming in and trying to update and automate that glorious old German copper brew system was a mistake driven by $$
What made it special was the steam brewing. I liked it and will miss it. I wonder if the branding will be sold off in bankruptcy and we'll get zombie Anchor Steam.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:17 PM on July 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
...
Sapporo coming in and trying to update and automate that glorious old German copper brew system was a mistake driven by $$
What made it special was the steam brewing. I liked it and will miss it. I wonder if the branding will be sold off in bankruptcy and we'll get zombie Anchor Steam.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:17 PM on July 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Heard the news this morning. Was in a local grocery store that has a huge selection of beer. No Anchor at all, nothing. I’ve never been a fan of their beer until back in the early 90’s, I had their Foghorn, a really excellent barley wine. That seemed to have disappeared a number of years ago. So far this week, given all the horrors in the world, my personal horror has been all the news about but lots of good companies, many of which I use and depend on their products, being bought out by bigger companies that only care about money. They say that as you get older you get to be more conservative. I started reading Capital by Karl Marx again. Capitalism is wrong and all the other negative adjectives. Fuck it.
posted by njohnson23 at 12:27 PM on July 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 12:27 PM on July 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Oh, I live in San Francisco.
posted by njohnson23 at 12:27 PM on July 12, 2023
posted by njohnson23 at 12:27 PM on July 12, 2023
A few weeks ago I went to a giant, supermarket-sized liquor store near me in New England and they had just two 12-packs of cans and two 12-packs of bottles left of Anchor beer. They were all samplers, so I grabbed one of the packs of cans and headed home.
Now I will drink each one little more attentively & meditatively, knowing it's my last ones ever. *sigh*
posted by wenestvedt at 12:28 PM on July 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Now I will drink each one little more attentively & meditatively, knowing it's my last ones ever. *sigh*
posted by wenestvedt at 12:28 PM on July 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
this is the worst timeline
posted by chavenet at 12:34 PM on July 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 12:34 PM on July 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
This sucks, but I live in Allegheny county where at least a couple local breweries do steam beers (or if we must, "California commons") from time to time.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 12:44 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 12:44 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Liberty is one of my all-time favorite beers; it was the only beer that the now-closed Pi Bar on Valencia (RIP) always had on tap, the owners having met while working at Anchor and Pi Bar being something of a hangout for Anchor employees. Liberty has a legitimate claim to being the first American IPA and is balanced in a way that today's ultra-hopped IPAs aren't at all, with a really nice maltiness that balances out the hops. I will miss it dearly. (I already mourn the old logo, which was delightfully ornate in a way the mid-Pandemic rebrand completely fails to capture.)
I would love to see Sierra Nevada swoop in and rescue the brewery. My guess is that given the recent steps that Sapporo took over the last few months (canceling Christmas Ale, then pulling back distribution to only California) failed to convince buyers of the brand/brewery's viability, that won't be happening.
I smelled the brewery while riding my bike into the office along 14th St this morning, and man, I will miss that. RIP Anchor.
posted by kdar at 12:45 PM on July 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
I would love to see Sierra Nevada swoop in and rescue the brewery. My guess is that given the recent steps that Sapporo took over the last few months (canceling Christmas Ale, then pulling back distribution to only California) failed to convince buyers of the brand/brewery's viability, that won't be happening.
I smelled the brewery while riding my bike into the office along 14th St this morning, and man, I will miss that. RIP Anchor.
posted by kdar at 12:45 PM on July 12, 2023 [7 favorites]
(Huh, apparently the Chron article suggests that they already brewed their last beer so I guess I was wrong about the smell this morning. Oh well.)
posted by kdar at 1:07 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by kdar at 1:07 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sorry to hear this. I didn't mind Anchor Steam.
Lakeport delenda est.
According to Wikipedia, the Lakeport brewery building in Hamilton (2 blocks from Mrs C's childhood home!) was sold to some craft-brewers in 2014, and is apparently still the home of Collective Arts brewing. So, I'd actually call that an upgrade. The old "Lakeport" budget brands are currently produced in Labatt's London ON brewery.
Always surprised when a big company (Sapporo) chooses to kill a small iconic brand (Anchor) rather than try to find a buyer. (or did they, and there were no takers?) But there's a lesson here; are you really a craft beer brewer if you need national distribution to survive?
Here in Ontario, there are currently many interesting craft brewers duking it out, but with many surviving and acquiring a fan-base. A shout-out for my local favourite - Great Lakes Brewing. But I like several others too.
(This is the latest news in an industry undergoing business contractions/shakeups, beer consumption reductions, and cultural reckonings as they try and push beyond the "white guy with a goatee" demographic - although not terribly successfully)
While I realize that brewers need buyers of their beer, the small brewers I respect and patronize have focused on brewing good beer! Isn't that enough, without having to start targeting demographics, focus groups, image makeover, blah blah blah?
posted by Artful Codger at 1:21 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Lakeport delenda est.
According to Wikipedia, the Lakeport brewery building in Hamilton (2 blocks from Mrs C's childhood home!) was sold to some craft-brewers in 2014, and is apparently still the home of Collective Arts brewing. So, I'd actually call that an upgrade. The old "Lakeport" budget brands are currently produced in Labatt's London ON brewery.
Always surprised when a big company (Sapporo) chooses to kill a small iconic brand (Anchor) rather than try to find a buyer. (or did they, and there were no takers?) But there's a lesson here; are you really a craft beer brewer if you need national distribution to survive?
Here in Ontario, there are currently many interesting craft brewers duking it out, but with many surviving and acquiring a fan-base. A shout-out for my local favourite - Great Lakes Brewing. But I like several others too.
(This is the latest news in an industry undergoing business contractions/shakeups, beer consumption reductions, and cultural reckonings as they try and push beyond the "white guy with a goatee" demographic - although not terribly successfully)
While I realize that brewers need buyers of their beer, the small brewers I respect and patronize have focused on brewing good beer! Isn't that enough, without having to start targeting demographics, focus groups, image makeover, blah blah blah?
posted by Artful Codger at 1:21 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
The stuff I've read has said that Sapporo tried for over a year to find an interested buyer, including folks like Russian River and Sierra Nevada, with no takers.
And, yes, unfortunately, "craft beer" is seen as a "middle class white guy" thing in many ways. In research, there's a greater interest in good beer, but a lot of folks who don't fall in that perceived sphere, don't feel welcome (both justly in some cases and not in others.) So, it is in the best interest of brewers to find the right balance to pull a broader audience in without pandering.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:25 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
And, yes, unfortunately, "craft beer" is seen as a "middle class white guy" thing in many ways. In research, there's a greater interest in good beer, but a lot of folks who don't fall in that perceived sphere, don't feel welcome (both justly in some cases and not in others.) So, it is in the best interest of brewers to find the right balance to pull a broader audience in without pandering.
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:25 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think Sapporo horribly misunderstood & mismanaged the brand. The label change was almost tone deaf and the introduced line extensions made zero sense, like adding a rather underwhelming IPA. Anchor was an historic brand that deserved to be carefully preserved & curated and cherished. It was part of SF and now that’s gone.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:28 PM on July 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:28 PM on July 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I never much cared for the original Anchor Steam lager but the porter and Our Special Ale were fantastic. I have three bottles of Our Special Ale that I cellared some time ago (the stuff ages like barley wine) and I guess I'll crack one at Christmas to see how they're doing.
RIP
posted by Ber at 1:31 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
RIP
posted by Ber at 1:31 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
While I realize that brewers need buyers of their beer, the small brewers I respect and patronize have focused on brewing good beer! Isn't that enough, without having to start targeting demographics, focus groups, image makeover, blah blah blah?
Nope. Craft beer is still incredibly white and not very inclusive. One of my good friends, Ren Navarro, is a queer black woman who has worked in craft beer for ages and is a consultant and speaker about minorities and women in craft brewing. Having good beer isn't enough if you alienate--even accidentally--a core group of potential purchasers.
And, yes, unfortunately, "craft beer" is seen as a "middle class white guy" thing in many ways. In research, there's a greater interest in good beer, but a lot of folks who don't fall in that perceived sphere, don't feel welcome (both justly in some cases and not in others.) So, it is in the best interest of brewers to find the right balance to pull a broader audience in without pandering.
drewbage1847 nails it.
posted by Kitteh at 1:38 PM on July 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
Nope. Craft beer is still incredibly white and not very inclusive. One of my good friends, Ren Navarro, is a queer black woman who has worked in craft beer for ages and is a consultant and speaker about minorities and women in craft brewing. Having good beer isn't enough if you alienate--even accidentally--a core group of potential purchasers.
And, yes, unfortunately, "craft beer" is seen as a "middle class white guy" thing in many ways. In research, there's a greater interest in good beer, but a lot of folks who don't fall in that perceived sphere, don't feel welcome (both justly in some cases and not in others.) So, it is in the best interest of brewers to find the right balance to pull a broader audience in without pandering.
drewbage1847 nails it.
posted by Kitteh at 1:38 PM on July 12, 2023 [12 favorites]
Man what a god damn bummer. I started paying a bit more attention when I heard they were slashing national distribution, and I realized I hadn't seen an anchor tap in a minute. I'm sure there are plenty of spots that do, but the most common tap I saw was Sierra where I used to have seen Anchor. Plus the new logo does really kill some of the heart of the brand, just another thing that gets killed now.
Edit: I'm in San Mateo county, so you'd think prime Anchor territory.
posted by Carillon at 1:43 PM on July 12, 2023
Edit: I'm in San Mateo county, so you'd think prime Anchor territory.
posted by Carillon at 1:43 PM on July 12, 2023
Craft beer is still incredibly white and not very inclusive. One of my good friends, Ren Navarro, is a queer black woman who has worked in craft beer for ages and is a consultant and speaker about minorities and women in craft brewing. Having good beer isn't enough if you alienate--even accidentally--a core group of potential purchasers.
Gotta give a big shout-out to my absolute favorite brewery in my area, Scarlet Lane Brewing, in McCordsville, IN. Head brewer Eilise Lane is an amazing brewer. If my fellow hoosier MeFites are up for a meetup, this would be the place.
On topic...I will miss Anchor Brewing. I think I had my first Anchor Steam way back in the 80s, and really loved it (somehow, a local bar here in Indy has bottles of it even then.) Anchor Porter, though, was something special. Delicious stuff.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:57 PM on July 12, 2023
Gotta give a big shout-out to my absolute favorite brewery in my area, Scarlet Lane Brewing, in McCordsville, IN. Head brewer Eilise Lane is an amazing brewer. If my fellow hoosier MeFites are up for a meetup, this would be the place.
On topic...I will miss Anchor Brewing. I think I had my first Anchor Steam way back in the 80s, and really loved it (somehow, a local bar here in Indy has bottles of it even then.) Anchor Porter, though, was something special. Delicious stuff.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:57 PM on July 12, 2023
First Schlitz and now this. I hate this century.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:59 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:59 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Let us take a moment to remember the best Anchor product placement of all time.
posted by kaibutsu at 2:03 PM on July 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by kaibutsu at 2:03 PM on July 12, 2023 [10 favorites]
It became harder and harder to find the Christmas Ale here over the last few years, but it's something my dad and I enjoyed. Bummer.
posted by emelenjr at 2:09 PM on July 12, 2023
posted by emelenjr at 2:09 PM on July 12, 2023
Sapporo also bought San Diego's Stone Cold brewery. I wonder how well things are going there.
Oh no, no more w00tStout from Fark?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 2:11 PM on July 12, 2023
Oh no, no more w00tStout from Fark?
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 2:11 PM on July 12, 2023
Kitteh is right that there in the work that folks like Ren is doing. Dr. Jackson-Beckham as well. I'm often worried that they're shouting into the void, but someone has to. I continue to be amazed at the amount of dude-broiness in the industry. Having said that, I don't think a lot of the alienation comes from straight out hate/dislike of POCs and others, just a complete lack of thinking about different groups of interest and a wounded surprise that folks might not feel completely comfortable (plus there are a lot of childish nitwits who've never grown up past the 6th grade)
Ok, back to Anchor..... I have a long history with the brewery, from a homebrewers perspective. My club, the Maltose Falcons, won the "Anchor Brewing California Homebrew Club of the Year" award about 7 times over the history of the award. They used to invite all the CA clubs to send representatives to the brewery and the winning club got to bring everyone. They'd put on a big dinner with tables all through the brewery floor and open up the old victorian bar taps for anything you could want from them. Sitting amongst the grand old multi-floor copper brew system they bought from a defunct German brewery, drinking beer and eating a good dinner was a blast.
They'd present the winning club with the trophy, which had multiple tiers with all the winners on it. The trophy was topped with a hand hammered copper mug, made from the leftovers of the brewery installation. Held about a quart. The tradition was that the Club President would be presented with a full mug of the beer of their choice. (People always chanted for Old Foghorn, I chose Liberty) You'd then drain the mug (either solo or with help) to many cheers.
After Griffin bought them, the party got rolled back and curtailed and eventually turned into "give us a recipe and we'll brew it on our pilot system". Sapporo seemed to out right kill the thing after a minute and that makes me sad.
Now I wonder where that trophy and mug is. We should get it to Smithsonian, but can I have one last ice cold mug of Liberty before we do?
(and w00t Stout is still being produced on occasion by Stone - who, from industry scuttle butt, had a hand in this shut down)
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:19 PM on July 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
Ok, back to Anchor..... I have a long history with the brewery, from a homebrewers perspective. My club, the Maltose Falcons, won the "Anchor Brewing California Homebrew Club of the Year" award about 7 times over the history of the award. They used to invite all the CA clubs to send representatives to the brewery and the winning club got to bring everyone. They'd put on a big dinner with tables all through the brewery floor and open up the old victorian bar taps for anything you could want from them. Sitting amongst the grand old multi-floor copper brew system they bought from a defunct German brewery, drinking beer and eating a good dinner was a blast.
They'd present the winning club with the trophy, which had multiple tiers with all the winners on it. The trophy was topped with a hand hammered copper mug, made from the leftovers of the brewery installation. Held about a quart. The tradition was that the Club President would be presented with a full mug of the beer of their choice. (People always chanted for Old Foghorn, I chose Liberty) You'd then drain the mug (either solo or with help) to many cheers.
After Griffin bought them, the party got rolled back and curtailed and eventually turned into "give us a recipe and we'll brew it on our pilot system". Sapporo seemed to out right kill the thing after a minute and that makes me sad.
Now I wonder where that trophy and mug is. We should get it to Smithsonian, but can I have one last ice cold mug of Liberty before we do?
(and w00t Stout is still being produced on occasion by Stone - who, from industry scuttle butt, had a hand in this shut down)
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:19 PM on July 12, 2023 [14 favorites]
When Labatt's trashed the Lakeport brewery they certainly did a job of it. Here's a link to the Brewmaster for Collective Arts talking about it.;
“They left torch marks all over where you could see they removed almost every piece of metal in the place,” he says. And what they couldn’t take with them wasn’t in any condition for use. “They definitely poured concrete into some of the existing drains,” he says, though he again falls short of pointing fingers. “As for their reason for doing so, I cannot say. It took us many months just to get the building into shape enough to allow us to start moving equipment in.”
And what became of all that equipment they yanked out?
“As the story goes,” Morrow says, “InBev destroyed most of the tanks and equipment, rather than repurpose any of it. We have some current employees who worked at Lakeport at the time they closed it down, who were there to witness it first hand. You can imagine for any long-time person working there how emotional it was to see people come into your workplace and destroy everything about your job that you had for years. A lot of tears were shed that day.”
I'd say Labatt's salted the earth there.
The Port authority ended up with building and leased the empty husk to the craft breweries
'
posted by yyz at 3:02 PM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
“They left torch marks all over where you could see they removed almost every piece of metal in the place,” he says. And what they couldn’t take with them wasn’t in any condition for use. “They definitely poured concrete into some of the existing drains,” he says, though he again falls short of pointing fingers. “As for their reason for doing so, I cannot say. It took us many months just to get the building into shape enough to allow us to start moving equipment in.”
And what became of all that equipment they yanked out?
“As the story goes,” Morrow says, “InBev destroyed most of the tanks and equipment, rather than repurpose any of it. We have some current employees who worked at Lakeport at the time they closed it down, who were there to witness it first hand. You can imagine for any long-time person working there how emotional it was to see people come into your workplace and destroy everything about your job that you had for years. A lot of tears were shed that day.”
I'd say Labatt's salted the earth there.
The Port authority ended up with building and leased the empty husk to the craft breweries
'
posted by yyz at 3:02 PM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
This is part of a larger dynamic where big companies like Sapporo and AB InBev want to undermine (2015, 2015) independent (2023) craft brewers (previously, previously), and, while this kind of thing is Capitalism 101, and it happens in any kind of industry that's big enough to have big fish and small ones, for some reason it especially bugs me when it's beer.
The Independent Craft Brewers Association seal is a not-entirely-uncontroversial subject, but I make a point of looking for it.
posted by box at 3:13 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
The Independent Craft Brewers Association seal is a not-entirely-uncontroversial subject, but I make a point of looking for it.
posted by box at 3:13 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I have a question for you beer-knowledgeable people.
Do home brewers ever approach the quaility of good craft brewers?
I was never much of a beer drinker, but I always held out hope that I’d find My Beer because I liked so many aspects of beer culture and even the beers themselves — the carbonation of beer seems to have finer, more intense bubbles than anything less, for example.
Until celiac disease put paid to those hopes along with a raft of others.
And I used to go to a local Brewer's Warehouse to buy real corks and to try to put together my own sparkling water installation to escape the dingy mediocrity of Soda Stream, et al, and I thought the equipment looked pretty good, and I didn’t immediately see why homebrew couldn’t compete as effectively with craft brew as home cooks do with chefs in restaurants (my experience is that the best home cooking significantly outstrips the best restaurants have to offer).
posted by jamjam at 3:28 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Do home brewers ever approach the quaility of good craft brewers?
I was never much of a beer drinker, but I always held out hope that I’d find My Beer because I liked so many aspects of beer culture and even the beers themselves — the carbonation of beer seems to have finer, more intense bubbles than anything less, for example.
Until celiac disease put paid to those hopes along with a raft of others.
And I used to go to a local Brewer's Warehouse to buy real corks and to try to put together my own sparkling water installation to escape the dingy mediocrity of Soda Stream, et al, and I thought the equipment looked pretty good, and I didn’t immediately see why homebrew couldn’t compete as effectively with craft brew as home cooks do with chefs in restaurants (my experience is that the best home cooking significantly outstrips the best restaurants have to offer).
posted by jamjam at 3:28 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Kitteh, do I have some hazy memory of you being involved with a podcast about women brewers?
posted by wenestvedt at 3:33 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 3:33 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Do home brewers ever approach the quaility of good craft brewers?
drewbage should speak for himself here, not me, but in his case I believe the answer is an emphatic yes. And many others make exciting, flavorful, historically-minded, or just tasty brews.
(I gave it up in favor of making mead, but homebrewing beer is awesome. Get to know a local homebrewer!)
posted by wenestvedt at 3:37 PM on July 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
drewbage should speak for himself here, not me, but in his case I believe the answer is an emphatic yes. And many others make exciting, flavorful, historically-minded, or just tasty brews.
(I gave it up in favor of making mead, but homebrewing beer is awesome. Get to know a local homebrewer!)
posted by wenestvedt at 3:37 PM on July 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Now there's a question solidly in my wheelhouse!
Can they? Yes and I'd argue that it can be fairly neck and neck until you get to the top producers in the craft beer world, but.....
Homebrewers operate at a distinct disadvantage in terms of equipment, O2 exposure, cleanliness, sheer process muscle memory and schedule adherence. In other words, our gear isn't as tuned to the idea of keeping as many germs and oxygen molecules away from the beer as possible and homebrewers tend to be a bit hazy and lazy with things.
Many of the better homebrewers can do better than your local brewery, but it's a rare few obsessives that can match a truly talented and well run professional brewery. And unsurprisingly, there's a lot of folks who produce "meh" beer at best.
As Wenestvedt points out, the real advantages that homebrewers have over a commercial joint
Can they? Yes and I'd argue that it can be fairly neck and neck until you get to the top producers in the craft beer world, but.....
Homebrewers operate at a distinct disadvantage in terms of equipment, O2 exposure, cleanliness, sheer process muscle memory and schedule adherence. In other words, our gear isn't as tuned to the idea of keeping as many germs and oxygen molecules away from the beer as possible and homebrewers tend to be a bit hazy and lazy with things.
Many of the better homebrewers can do better than your local brewery, but it's a rare few obsessives that can match a truly talented and well run professional brewery. And unsurprisingly, there's a lot of folks who produce "meh" beer at best.
As Wenestvedt points out, the real advantages that homebrewers have over a commercial joint
- we control our beer from tun to pint and can keep the beer cold the whole way (heat and oxygen being the enemies of the process)
- we are absolutely unconstrained by commercial needs. I don't make many IPAs these days because I can just pop out and buy good ones nearby (or mail order here in CA). I make the things I can't buy - a Saison/Farmhouse to my taste, a mild, a cream ale that uses malted corn, a hellesbock, etc.
- Jamjam - in your case, you even have the freedom to futz around in the world of gluten-free (or reduced) brewing and try and find the best ways to make tasty beer from non-glutenous grains/sugars
The phrase "a cream ale that uses malted corn" definitely made a tingle run over my tongue, drewbage1847.
posted by jamjam at 3:58 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 3:58 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's interesting stuff - Been using versions from Sugar Creek Malting Company in Indiana and each of them (Bloody Butcher Red, Alice Boone White and Oaxacan Green) bring something different to the finished product. Assertive in a way that regular yellow dent corn never is.
posted by drewbage1847 at 4:02 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by drewbage1847 at 4:02 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
"you don't know what you've got 'til its gone." to sit for an hour with an ice cold to start bottle of Anchor porter and journey the flavor trail as you sip and it warms... it has been too long and now never ):
posted by wmo at 4:14 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by wmo at 4:14 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
Their flag is flying upside down at the brewery.
posted by hototogisu at 5:24 PM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by hototogisu at 5:24 PM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Damn. For a long time, part of any trip to SF involved a trip to Vesuvio for an Anchor Steam (on tap, natch), after a visit to City Lights bookstore.
Plus ca change.
posted by dbmcd at 5:29 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Plus ca change.
posted by dbmcd at 5:29 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
RIP Anchor. Liberty Ale and Anchor Porter were great beers. I love the shape of their bottles and the texture of their original labels. They're almost as great as Orval bottles.
I came of age in the first microbrew expansion period, and got really into beer. I was a serious homebrewer from 1996 through 2010 or so, going all-grain and kegging my homebrew in soda kegs with a dedicated beer fridge. I don't drink much beer any more, but I'll put my money on the original microbreweries and the class of mid-1990s breweries (Victory, Bell's Brewery, etc) as producing some of the best beer ever. I get why current craft brewers are doing what they're doing, they have to sell beer to stay afloat, but to me those well-balanced beers from the mid-1990s will beat a milkshake IPA hands down.
And for you homebrewers out there, I can't begin to explain how much energy was spent on Usenet and mailing lists trying to figure out how to make our beer as clear as possible. It makes the hazy IPA thing seem so weird given the historical context.
posted by mollweide at 5:31 PM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
I came of age in the first microbrew expansion period, and got really into beer. I was a serious homebrewer from 1996 through 2010 or so, going all-grain and kegging my homebrew in soda kegs with a dedicated beer fridge. I don't drink much beer any more, but I'll put my money on the original microbreweries and the class of mid-1990s breweries (Victory, Bell's Brewery, etc) as producing some of the best beer ever. I get why current craft brewers are doing what they're doing, they have to sell beer to stay afloat, but to me those well-balanced beers from the mid-1990s will beat a milkshake IPA hands down.
And for you homebrewers out there, I can't begin to explain how much energy was spent on Usenet and mailing lists trying to figure out how to make our beer as clear as possible. It makes the hazy IPA thing seem so weird given the historical context.
posted by mollweide at 5:31 PM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Back in the days of rec.crafts.brewing and the HBD, so many battles, so many (amusingly, a number of the same discussions and battles still continue)
posted by drewbage1847 at 6:11 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by drewbage1847 at 6:11 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I started home brewing after a visit to Anchor. I had visited larger breweries and the cutting edge automated massive equipment made me think it was impossible to make good beer at home.
The smaller scale of Anchor, the open fermentation vessels, weighing hops by hand, etc… made me believe I could brew something good at home.
To add to the chorus of answers to jamjam: It is like asking if someone can bake good bread at home, divided by Sturgeon’s Law and multiplied by de gustibus non disputandum est.
tl;dr: If a homebrewer is willing to perfect a recipe over 12 times over 4 years, or willing to spend 2 years on a single batch, they can make something better than almost anything you can buy.
Most homebrewers make meh to OK beer. Because they use low quality ingredients (extracts, old hops, low quality grain, low quality water, crappy yeast, …), not very good technique (oxygen control, temperature control, higiene, contamination, drinking too much while brewing, and in general lack of knowledge and attention to detail), and finally uninteresting recipes.
There are some home brewers that persevere, learn, improve their skills, prefect their technique, and make very very good beer.
I believe that homebrewers that try to brew like commercial brewers end up with worse beer, homebrewers that embrace the “home” part can make great beer.
From my personal experience brewing alone and with better brewers, these are some advantages that a home brewer can have over a big brewery:
- Being wasteful. For a 10 gallon batch one can spend $10 or $20 more to either buy better quality ingredients (fresh liquid yeast vs dry yeast for example), or just more ingredients (an extra pound of grain gives a good margin to reach the planned sugar content without risking too many tannins, for example. For a 10,000 gallon batch, that is $10k or $20k more. Commercial breweries have very high efficiencies (how much of the good stuff one can extract from a quantity of grains and hops), a homebrewer trying to achieve the same efficiencies (a kind of pissing contest in some brewing communities) is risking making bad beer.
- Taking it slow. A commercial brewery has optimized their schedule, every extra day that the beer is sitting somewhere is a day no new beer is being made. Beginner and competitive home brewers try to do everything quickly. Some beers benefit from a slower approach. Longer fermentation at slightly lower temperature, longer secondary fermentation, allowing natural carbonation, etc… A couple kegs or carboys in the garage or closet for a couple weeks or months is nothing. An extra day keeping beer in your huge tanks.
- Experimentation and iteration. If one has the time and patience, it is not that expensive to experiment with new recipes and processes, either to try something new or to perfect a recipe. I’ll talk about some of my experiments at the end.
- Insane and inefficient equipment DIY or bespoke equipment. It is relatively inexpensive to come up with insane contraptions to improve processes, hundreds to thousands of dollars, compared to millions for large breweries. I’ve built or helped build wort oxygenators, a nitrogen purged beer transfer system, stupidly over engineered temperature control systems (liquid cooled fermentation vessel, using a chest freezer half full of water as thermal sync for 5 gallons of beer), a hops dispenser to do continuous hopping during the boil (similar to dogfish’s 90 and 120 minute IPA, but dogfish uses discrete dosing and we achieved continuous dosing), etc… A commercial brewery can not afford to overengineer and allow space for tinkering.
- Water. Mineral content of brewing water has a huge effect on finished beer. Most homebrewers use whatever water they can get and try to make recipes from other places work. Pilsner is the way it is because the local water is super clean, London porter is so dark because of all the calcium in London water. Copy the recipe with your local water and you may get dark Pilsner and light porter. A homebrewer can perfect a beer that works just right with their local water, or they can start with distilled water and add minerals to taste. Both options are very cheap. Literally under a quarter worth of chalk can completely change the character of 10 gallons of beer. This can take a beer from OK to prize winning.
- Creative recipes. See all of the above. A homebrewer can get really creative with their recipes and risk only a weekend of time and a little money. This is how one discovers new beers.
Two of my best beers were the Belgian Pink and the Scottish Single Malt.
The Belgian Pink started as a by the book Belgian White. I wanted to add a touch of the old country and added a little jamaica from Colima (I call it Jamaica instead of Hibiscus because in my experience most hibiscus is produced in China, India, Northern Africa, and the US, and it is more colorful but less flavorful. Jamaica from Colima is tart and slightly fruity). I replaced some of the butter orange rind with Mexican sweet lime rind, created a blend of different coriander seeds from an Indian grocery, a blend of 4 hops, found the best yeast out of 6 I tridd… After about 12 iterations I had a nice cloudy pinkish beer, very refreshing, a little tart, a little fruity. It was over 8 percent alcohol, but it did not taste like it. The brief was a very refreshing beer to get pleasantly drunk at Golden Gate Park without having to pee too often. I know it was good because everyone from light beer drinkers to beer snobs I knew could not get enough of it.
The Scottish Single Malt was based on something I read that could be completely made up as far as I know. The story is that the evil English were jealous of the Scottish beer industry so they kept all the good hops and malt for themselves and would only sell old oxidized hops to Scottish brewers, and no dark or sweet malts at all. The Scottish brewers figures out how to make a great sting beer using only golden promise malt and old hops. There is another part of the story about how the brewers would take the kegs for a walk, rolling them around the courtyard, to make the beer better.
A beer made with 100% golden promise and old hops one would expect to be light in color, taste, and mouthfeel. It would also be expected to be bitter but missing all the other aromas that make hops interesting.
They way I made it was to go in knowing I would be wasteful. Went overboard with the grain bill, 100% Golden Promise, in order to not worry about edifice and risk not hitting my OG ( original gravity, amount of sugar in the y fermented wort that determines the final alcohol content, if we ignore like a million variables) or extracting tannins during soarging. I also aimed for almost double the normal amount of wort.
I took the first quarter of the wort, the sweetest part, and slow boiled it to reduce it to 1/4 the original volume. This created a bunch of dark colored stuff, interesting smelling stuff, unfermebtable sugars, maybe some caramelization or Maillard reactions, I don’t know. The second quarter of the wort I reduced by half. The second I left as it was. I did a second sparging for a lighter beer.
I used my homemade oxygenation apparatus and a 2 liter yeast starter that I had been culturing and slowly acclimating to the wort’s OG over 3 days. This gave a super quick and healthy primary fermentation that resulted in awful tasting beer full of fermentation byproducts and residual sugar. I transferred this to a stainless keg using the homemade nitrogen purged transfer system and put it in a closet. Every six weeks I would roll it up and down the hallway and take a little sample. It tasted awful for the first 6 months, like paint remover, bandaids, burnt rubber…
At the 12 month mark it started tasting like cheap barley wine. At 18 months it started to actually taste good. A barley wine with many layers of flavor and aroma. I did my one minute test, take a sip and focus on the taste and aroma all the way from bringing it close to my nose to the aftertaste one minute after. Everyone has their own descriptors for taste and aroma, I won’t bore you with mine, except that I was very surprised that after a minute I could have sworn I had eaten a slice of date pie and liked a prune (I love date pie and prunes). It was in my estimation between 12% and 14% alcohol.
The owner or my local beer snob bar liked it enough that after hours we hooked it to one of the taps and between the staff and the regulars it was gone in an hour. A few people asked me to make a new batch, but no one was willing to buy me a new keg, take it home, and take it for a walk every 6 weeks for two years.
I miss brewing beer:
posted by Dr. Curare at 6:27 PM on July 12, 2023 [53 favorites]
The smaller scale of Anchor, the open fermentation vessels, weighing hops by hand, etc… made me believe I could brew something good at home.
To add to the chorus of answers to jamjam: It is like asking if someone can bake good bread at home, divided by Sturgeon’s Law and multiplied by de gustibus non disputandum est.
tl;dr: If a homebrewer is willing to perfect a recipe over 12 times over 4 years, or willing to spend 2 years on a single batch, they can make something better than almost anything you can buy.
Most homebrewers make meh to OK beer. Because they use low quality ingredients (extracts, old hops, low quality grain, low quality water, crappy yeast, …), not very good technique (oxygen control, temperature control, higiene, contamination, drinking too much while brewing, and in general lack of knowledge and attention to detail), and finally uninteresting recipes.
There are some home brewers that persevere, learn, improve their skills, prefect their technique, and make very very good beer.
I believe that homebrewers that try to brew like commercial brewers end up with worse beer, homebrewers that embrace the “home” part can make great beer.
From my personal experience brewing alone and with better brewers, these are some advantages that a home brewer can have over a big brewery:
- Being wasteful. For a 10 gallon batch one can spend $10 or $20 more to either buy better quality ingredients (fresh liquid yeast vs dry yeast for example), or just more ingredients (an extra pound of grain gives a good margin to reach the planned sugar content without risking too many tannins, for example. For a 10,000 gallon batch, that is $10k or $20k more. Commercial breweries have very high efficiencies (how much of the good stuff one can extract from a quantity of grains and hops), a homebrewer trying to achieve the same efficiencies (a kind of pissing contest in some brewing communities) is risking making bad beer.
- Taking it slow. A commercial brewery has optimized their schedule, every extra day that the beer is sitting somewhere is a day no new beer is being made. Beginner and competitive home brewers try to do everything quickly. Some beers benefit from a slower approach. Longer fermentation at slightly lower temperature, longer secondary fermentation, allowing natural carbonation, etc… A couple kegs or carboys in the garage or closet for a couple weeks or months is nothing. An extra day keeping beer in your huge tanks.
- Experimentation and iteration. If one has the time and patience, it is not that expensive to experiment with new recipes and processes, either to try something new or to perfect a recipe. I’ll talk about some of my experiments at the end.
- Insane and inefficient equipment DIY or bespoke equipment. It is relatively inexpensive to come up with insane contraptions to improve processes, hundreds to thousands of dollars, compared to millions for large breweries. I’ve built or helped build wort oxygenators, a nitrogen purged beer transfer system, stupidly over engineered temperature control systems (liquid cooled fermentation vessel, using a chest freezer half full of water as thermal sync for 5 gallons of beer), a hops dispenser to do continuous hopping during the boil (similar to dogfish’s 90 and 120 minute IPA, but dogfish uses discrete dosing and we achieved continuous dosing), etc… A commercial brewery can not afford to overengineer and allow space for tinkering.
- Water. Mineral content of brewing water has a huge effect on finished beer. Most homebrewers use whatever water they can get and try to make recipes from other places work. Pilsner is the way it is because the local water is super clean, London porter is so dark because of all the calcium in London water. Copy the recipe with your local water and you may get dark Pilsner and light porter. A homebrewer can perfect a beer that works just right with their local water, or they can start with distilled water and add minerals to taste. Both options are very cheap. Literally under a quarter worth of chalk can completely change the character of 10 gallons of beer. This can take a beer from OK to prize winning.
- Creative recipes. See all of the above. A homebrewer can get really creative with their recipes and risk only a weekend of time and a little money. This is how one discovers new beers.
Two of my best beers were the Belgian Pink and the Scottish Single Malt.
The Belgian Pink started as a by the book Belgian White. I wanted to add a touch of the old country and added a little jamaica from Colima (I call it Jamaica instead of Hibiscus because in my experience most hibiscus is produced in China, India, Northern Africa, and the US, and it is more colorful but less flavorful. Jamaica from Colima is tart and slightly fruity). I replaced some of the butter orange rind with Mexican sweet lime rind, created a blend of different coriander seeds from an Indian grocery, a blend of 4 hops, found the best yeast out of 6 I tridd… After about 12 iterations I had a nice cloudy pinkish beer, very refreshing, a little tart, a little fruity. It was over 8 percent alcohol, but it did not taste like it. The brief was a very refreshing beer to get pleasantly drunk at Golden Gate Park without having to pee too often. I know it was good because everyone from light beer drinkers to beer snobs I knew could not get enough of it.
The Scottish Single Malt was based on something I read that could be completely made up as far as I know. The story is that the evil English were jealous of the Scottish beer industry so they kept all the good hops and malt for themselves and would only sell old oxidized hops to Scottish brewers, and no dark or sweet malts at all. The Scottish brewers figures out how to make a great sting beer using only golden promise malt and old hops. There is another part of the story about how the brewers would take the kegs for a walk, rolling them around the courtyard, to make the beer better.
A beer made with 100% golden promise and old hops one would expect to be light in color, taste, and mouthfeel. It would also be expected to be bitter but missing all the other aromas that make hops interesting.
They way I made it was to go in knowing I would be wasteful. Went overboard with the grain bill, 100% Golden Promise, in order to not worry about edifice and risk not hitting my OG ( original gravity, amount of sugar in the y fermented wort that determines the final alcohol content, if we ignore like a million variables) or extracting tannins during soarging. I also aimed for almost double the normal amount of wort.
I took the first quarter of the wort, the sweetest part, and slow boiled it to reduce it to 1/4 the original volume. This created a bunch of dark colored stuff, interesting smelling stuff, unfermebtable sugars, maybe some caramelization or Maillard reactions, I don’t know. The second quarter of the wort I reduced by half. The second I left as it was. I did a second sparging for a lighter beer.
I used my homemade oxygenation apparatus and a 2 liter yeast starter that I had been culturing and slowly acclimating to the wort’s OG over 3 days. This gave a super quick and healthy primary fermentation that resulted in awful tasting beer full of fermentation byproducts and residual sugar. I transferred this to a stainless keg using the homemade nitrogen purged transfer system and put it in a closet. Every six weeks I would roll it up and down the hallway and take a little sample. It tasted awful for the first 6 months, like paint remover, bandaids, burnt rubber…
At the 12 month mark it started tasting like cheap barley wine. At 18 months it started to actually taste good. A barley wine with many layers of flavor and aroma. I did my one minute test, take a sip and focus on the taste and aroma all the way from bringing it close to my nose to the aftertaste one minute after. Everyone has their own descriptors for taste and aroma, I won’t bore you with mine, except that I was very surprised that after a minute I could have sworn I had eaten a slice of date pie and liked a prune (I love date pie and prunes). It was in my estimation between 12% and 14% alcohol.
The owner or my local beer snob bar liked it enough that after hours we hooked it to one of the taps and between the staff and the regulars it was gone in an hour. A few people asked me to make a new batch, but no one was willing to buy me a new keg, take it home, and take it for a walk every 6 weeks for two years.
I miss brewing beer:
posted by Dr. Curare at 6:27 PM on July 12, 2023 [53 favorites]
I lived in San Francisco for 11 years and never (or at least exceedingly rarely) drank Anchor Steam. Sierra Nevada was the local beer for me. And then it was Bear Republic's Racer 5, or anything from Speakeasy Ales & Lagers.
Long time Bay Area resident. Captures my sentiment. I feel like Anchor Steam owes a lot of the fond vibes to a time when bringing a mass produced import like Beck's to a party counted as having good taste in beers. Anchor Steam stood out against the field back then.
There are so many more options now, including just in the local area, let alone up and down the west coast. (Both Speakeasy and Bear Republic are great options, but just the tip of the iceberg.)
posted by mark k at 6:32 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Long time Bay Area resident. Captures my sentiment. I feel like Anchor Steam owes a lot of the fond vibes to a time when bringing a mass produced import like Beck's to a party counted as having good taste in beers. Anchor Steam stood out against the field back then.
There are so many more options now, including just in the local area, let alone up and down the west coast. (Both Speakeasy and Bear Republic are great options, but just the tip of the iceberg.)
posted by mark k at 6:32 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Back when I was brewing, I was making exactly the beer I wanted to drink. Dark milds, a true ESB, and a great porter, made mostly with Maris Otter malt and whatever hops and liquid yeast I wanted to use. One of the reasons I don't drink much beer anymore is that I can't find commercially produced beers in the eastern US that can match what I used to make, and I don't want to spend my time these days making beer.
Rec.crafts.brewing and the Home Brew Digest were the first places I looked at when settling in for the workday back in the day. I guess the HBD is still around, sort of, as a shell at least! I'm somehow not surprised that the same arguments are still raging, since it was clear they weren't being settled way back when.
posted by mollweide at 6:40 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Rec.crafts.brewing and the Home Brew Digest were the first places I looked at when settling in for the workday back in the day. I guess the HBD is still around, sort of, as a shell at least! I'm somehow not surprised that the same arguments are still raging, since it was clear they weren't being settled way back when.
posted by mollweide at 6:40 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh yes! A true ESB is a thing of beauty. I could never get mine exactly where I wanted it, but a neighbor made a really good one. I traded my Lemongrass Lawnmower for his ESB whenever I could.
posted by Dr. Curare at 6:43 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Dr. Curare at 6:43 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
My affection for Anchor Steam is definitely partly nostalgic, because it was still “the good beer” when I was a kid, because it was something my dad drank. But it’s definitely something I’d order on tap any time up to now, if I wanted a nice refreshing lightly flavored beer but not Cheap American Beer. I like Racer 5 a lot but that’s a legit IPA, it’s not the same niche.
I bought the porter pretty often, too, but… I feel like that one’s easier to replace, honestly. I dunno what the Anchor Steam fallback for California bar standards is except, like, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Which is fine but there was something about the Anchor.
posted by atoxyl at 6:49 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I bought the porter pretty often, too, but… I feel like that one’s easier to replace, honestly. I dunno what the Anchor Steam fallback for California bar standards is except, like, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Which is fine but there was something about the Anchor.
posted by atoxyl at 6:49 PM on July 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Anchor Steam was always my choice if the bar didn’t offer anything else I wanted but it was a solidly tasty beer and I enjoyed the taproom at the brewery at least once.
posted by bendy at 6:57 PM on July 12, 2023
posted by bendy at 6:57 PM on July 12, 2023
I'm pretty sure one of my first homebrews was a California Common from one of Charlie Papazian's books.
posted by credulous at 8:00 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by credulous at 8:00 PM on July 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
I wonder if part of the problem is that we are drinking fewer national microbrews than we used to. A decade ago I was excited to try every brand I could find, but now with the locals all canning their own beer I just drink stuff from nearby.
posted by anhedonic at 9:16 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by anhedonic at 9:16 PM on July 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
a nice, inexpensive local beer with an attachment to its city and a very nice logo and a history
kensington314, exactly. This is what we've lost (not losing, that ship has sailed), the idea that not everything has to be everywhere. Growth at all costs doesn't allow for "locally beloved," it must be shipped out everywhere. There was something lovely about visiting a new place and seeing things that you couldn't see anywhere else, that maybe, at best, you'd bring back for others as souvenirs. Every mall is the same sad collection of national retailers, with the same sad fast food in all of the food courts. Supermarkets nationwide carry pale, watered down versions of things that used to be a local treat in some mid-sized city somewhere.
Finding anything local or different takes much more work than it should, especially since, once discovered, you're waiting for it either to be discovered, bought out, and ruined, or to go out of business because there's no place for a single shop, or even small local chain. No small business can compete against the purchasing power of national brands. If they manage to persist, you get what happened with Bells, where the founder couldn't get his children to take over the company, and it got bought out by, essentially, Kirin.
A Two-Hearted IPA was a rare sometimes treat on a trip back from Japan, something I deeply treasured, but more than likely, I've had my last one. All I can really hope is that New Glaurus manages to somehow keep on keeping on, and that I can still make time to get up to Wisconsin every time I come back to Chicago.
posted by Ghidorah at 11:31 PM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
kensington314, exactly. This is what we've lost (not losing, that ship has sailed), the idea that not everything has to be everywhere. Growth at all costs doesn't allow for "locally beloved," it must be shipped out everywhere. There was something lovely about visiting a new place and seeing things that you couldn't see anywhere else, that maybe, at best, you'd bring back for others as souvenirs. Every mall is the same sad collection of national retailers, with the same sad fast food in all of the food courts. Supermarkets nationwide carry pale, watered down versions of things that used to be a local treat in some mid-sized city somewhere.
Finding anything local or different takes much more work than it should, especially since, once discovered, you're waiting for it either to be discovered, bought out, and ruined, or to go out of business because there's no place for a single shop, or even small local chain. No small business can compete against the purchasing power of national brands. If they manage to persist, you get what happened with Bells, where the founder couldn't get his children to take over the company, and it got bought out by, essentially, Kirin.
A Two-Hearted IPA was a rare sometimes treat on a trip back from Japan, something I deeply treasured, but more than likely, I've had my last one. All I can really hope is that New Glaurus manages to somehow keep on keeping on, and that I can still make time to get up to Wisconsin every time I come back to Chicago.
posted by Ghidorah at 11:31 PM on July 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
I’ve worked at a small, regional (distribution in two states) craft brewery for almost 11 years now. It’s mind blowing how fast this industry has fallen to the rapaciousness of global capitalism. The writing’s been on the wall for a good while now, but this strikes me as the bellwether of the death of a culture. It was, I suppose, inevitable. Still tough to swallow. I believed I would work the rest of my days at my brewery, now I believe that that won’t be the case. So it goes …
If you have a brewpub in your neck of the woods and beer means anything to you at all, start doing your drinking there. It’s the only future left for the ideal that Anchor helped establish.
posted by barrett caulk at 5:44 AM on July 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
If you have a brewpub in your neck of the woods and beer means anything to you at all, start doing your drinking there. It’s the only future left for the ideal that Anchor helped establish.
posted by barrett caulk at 5:44 AM on July 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
Did the new designs come in when Sapporo bought them out? That was a huge step in the wrong direction, and now I have an idea why it happened.
I didn't realize that distribution outside of California had stopped. There's still a couple-three sixers of Anchor Steam at the convenience store- I'd better grab them while I can. What a damned shame; I liked Anchor Steam, the Christmas beer was always a treat, and after they unionized I hoped they'd set a precedent in the industry.
posted by heteronym at 5:57 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
I didn't realize that distribution outside of California had stopped. There's still a couple-three sixers of Anchor Steam at the convenience store- I'd better grab them while I can. What a damned shame; I liked Anchor Steam, the Christmas beer was always a treat, and after they unionized I hoped they'd set a precedent in the industry.
posted by heteronym at 5:57 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Anchor Brewing was San Francisco by Patrick Roth, for Defector. The category on their site for the article is Capital, and goddamn, there's a cavalcade of shitty news under that link. Roth takes a pretty solid swing at the Chronicle for basically printing a press release instead of doing any actual journalism, and it's well worth a read.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:58 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Ghidorah at 5:58 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is what we've lost (not losing, that ship has sailed), the idea that not everything has to be everywhere. Growth at all costs doesn't allow for "locally beloved," it must be shipped out everywhere. There was something lovely about visiting a new place and seeing things that you couldn't see anywhere else, that maybe, at best, you'd bring back for others as souvenirs.
Bo Burlingham wrote a book about this niche, Small Giants, about companies that in his words "chose to be great rather than big" and the challenges and rewards of this sort of focus.
That book begins with the words: "At the Anchor Brewery on Mariposa Street in San Francisco..."
sic transit gloria mundi, I suppose.
posted by gauche at 6:16 AM on July 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
Bo Burlingham wrote a book about this niche, Small Giants, about companies that in his words "chose to be great rather than big" and the challenges and rewards of this sort of focus.
That book begins with the words: "At the Anchor Brewery on Mariposa Street in San Francisco..."
sic transit gloria mundi, I suppose.
posted by gauche at 6:16 AM on July 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
I wonder if part of the problem is that we are drinking fewer national microbrews than we used to. A decade ago I was excited to try every brand I could find, but now with the locals all canning their own beer I just drink stuff from nearby.
Slate ran a piece last week that suggests the breweries in real danger are, like Anchor, mid-sized breweries with regional or national distribution. So, the big microbrews that we're not drinking anymore. Look at the awful reinvention of Fat Tire and the spinoff of Voodoo Ranger into ... whatever it's become.
I don't really drink a ton of beer anymore, but the beers I drink are either giant macros, when they're the best option, or what the article calls "taproom breweries," those who maybe distribute locally, but get most of their income from on-premises and taproom-takeaway sales. For me, personally, the mid-sized breweries have largely disappeared. I only drink Sierra Nevada between Thanksgiving and Groundhog Day (Celebration season), and when I'm bringing beer to a party, it's probably one of our many local breweries with supermarket distribution.
Speaking of which, our largest local brewery (the one yet to be gobbled up by AB-InBev, anyway) is opening not one but two new locations in the next year or so. They don't distribute out-of-state, so far as I know, but they seem to be growing at an ill-advised pace. Their taproom is always packed and lively, and their new locations seem to be more like brewpubs, which is presumably a much lower-margin business. They make decent, consistent beer, so... this is somewhat worrisome.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:50 AM on July 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Slate ran a piece last week that suggests the breweries in real danger are, like Anchor, mid-sized breweries with regional or national distribution. So, the big microbrews that we're not drinking anymore. Look at the awful reinvention of Fat Tire and the spinoff of Voodoo Ranger into ... whatever it's become.
I don't really drink a ton of beer anymore, but the beers I drink are either giant macros, when they're the best option, or what the article calls "taproom breweries," those who maybe distribute locally, but get most of their income from on-premises and taproom-takeaway sales. For me, personally, the mid-sized breweries have largely disappeared. I only drink Sierra Nevada between Thanksgiving and Groundhog Day (Celebration season), and when I'm bringing beer to a party, it's probably one of our many local breweries with supermarket distribution.
Speaking of which, our largest local brewery (the one yet to be gobbled up by AB-InBev, anyway) is opening not one but two new locations in the next year or so. They don't distribute out-of-state, so far as I know, but they seem to be growing at an ill-advised pace. Their taproom is always packed and lively, and their new locations seem to be more like brewpubs, which is presumably a much lower-margin business. They make decent, consistent beer, so... this is somewhat worrisome.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:50 AM on July 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
I didn’t love beer in college. I learned to choke down Bud Light or Natty out of a keg, but those first ten or fifteen times I did, it was not a fun experience. I think I’m somewhat of a super-taster and the bitterness just got me.
Keg beer was ubiquitous and my experience was limited mainly to American rice lager until I turned 21. I resolved that my first legal drink would be a beer that I might actually like. I went to a slightly out-off-the-way bar in Athens, GA - The Go Bar (RIP) - and asked the bartender for a beer that was a little different from what I was used to. He handed me an ice cold Anchor Steam and it was delicious. It became my go-to beer for a bit, until I realized that there were 500 other options that I also might like and I started exploring.
Anyway, I haven’t had it in awhile and when I heard this news, I went out to buy a couple of 6-packs (with the shitty new logo) for old time’s sake. It’s a good beer. Not mind-blowing, but still really solid. I won’t miss it, but I’ll miss the fact that it’s there.
posted by Fritzle at 7:12 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Keg beer was ubiquitous and my experience was limited mainly to American rice lager until I turned 21. I resolved that my first legal drink would be a beer that I might actually like. I went to a slightly out-off-the-way bar in Athens, GA - The Go Bar (RIP) - and asked the bartender for a beer that was a little different from what I was used to. He handed me an ice cold Anchor Steam and it was delicious. It became my go-to beer for a bit, until I realized that there were 500 other options that I also might like and I started exploring.
Anyway, I haven’t had it in awhile and when I heard this news, I went out to buy a couple of 6-packs (with the shitty new logo) for old time’s sake. It’s a good beer. Not mind-blowing, but still really solid. I won’t miss it, but I’ll miss the fact that it’s there.
posted by Fritzle at 7:12 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think "national microbrew" is a bit of an oxymoron. It's what giants like Sapporo want to achieve - a widely-recognized brand that is, or was, "crafty", to win back the beer-drinkers who drifted away from their flagship mass-market brands.
Here in Ontario, even in our smaller cities, it's pretty easy to find small brewers and craft beers. We are spoilt for choice, and I am now pretty much a beer slut, open to trying new ones as they appear. (Though I do hope Hop City will someday bring back Creamsicle). In Ontario, beer distribution is still largely through government-run (LCBO) or government-sanctioned (Brewers' Retail) outlets, and in exchange for those monopolies they are sort of arm-twisted into carrying a wide variety of product. The craft breweries are also able to sell directly from their own facilities or brewpubs. And online purchase with delivery is a thing!
As the above digression into homebrewing seems to demonstrate, the dominating feature of craft-brewing is superior taste. I know that brand image and identity play some part... but I still believe that the core, durable market for craft beers is motivated by taste. For the record, I do believe that the craft-brewers in my area work hard on their branding and packaging to not offend or exclude any minority of any description.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:08 AM on July 13, 2023
Here in Ontario, even in our smaller cities, it's pretty easy to find small brewers and craft beers. We are spoilt for choice, and I am now pretty much a beer slut, open to trying new ones as they appear. (Though I do hope Hop City will someday bring back Creamsicle). In Ontario, beer distribution is still largely through government-run (LCBO) or government-sanctioned (Brewers' Retail) outlets, and in exchange for those monopolies they are sort of arm-twisted into carrying a wide variety of product. The craft breweries are also able to sell directly from their own facilities or brewpubs. And online purchase with delivery is a thing!
As the above digression into homebrewing seems to demonstrate, the dominating feature of craft-brewing is superior taste. I know that brand image and identity play some part... but I still believe that the core, durable market for craft beers is motivated by taste. For the record, I do believe that the craft-brewers in my area work hard on their branding and packaging to not offend or exclude any minority of any description.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:08 AM on July 13, 2023
In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable companies that have chosen to march to their own drummer. They include:
Anchor Brewing, the original microbrewer;
CitiStorage Inc., the premier independent records-storage business; Acquired 2014 by a larger storage co, that was then acquired by Iron Mountain.
Clif Bar & Co., maker of organic energy bars ... Acquired 2022 by Mondelez.
Union Square Hospitality Group, the company of restaurateur Danny Meyer; if this is the survivable kind of small, then yikes: "founded by CEO Danny Meyer with the opening of Union Square Cafe in 1985, the company now extends beyond the walls of its eateries. In addition to creating Shake Shack [publicly traded, market cap $3.34B], USHG offers operational consulting, runs a multifaceted catering and events business, Union Square Events, and a growth fund, Enlightened Hospitality Investments (EHI)."
Zingerman's Community of Businesses, including the world-famous Zingerman's Deli of Ann Arbor. This is still going, though it's not that small of an operation. They do seem affirmatively uninterested in expanding beyond the general Ann Arbor area. Reminds me of McMenamin's in Portland and nearby Oregon. Zingerman's has a consulting arm too.
Righteous Babe Records, the record company founded by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco. Still independent, but doesn't do its own distribution or merch retailing.
I'd be curious about the others.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:17 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
CitiStorage Inc., the premier independent records-storage business;
Union Square Hospitality Group, the company of restaurateur Danny Meyer; if this is the survivable kind of small, then yikes: "founded by CEO Danny Meyer with the opening of Union Square Cafe in 1985, the company now extends beyond the walls of its eateries. In addition to creating Shake Shack [publicly traded, market cap $3.34B], USHG offers operational consulting, runs a multifaceted catering and events business, Union Square Events, and a growth fund, Enlightened Hospitality Investments (EHI)."
Zingerman's Community of Businesses, including the world-famous Zingerman's Deli of Ann Arbor. This is still going, though it's not that small of an operation. They do seem affirmatively uninterested in expanding beyond the general Ann Arbor area. Reminds me of McMenamin's in Portland and nearby Oregon. Zingerman's has a consulting arm too.
Righteous Babe Records, the record company founded by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco. Still independent, but doesn't do its own distribution or merch retailing.
I'd be curious about the others.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:17 AM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is what we've lost (not losing, that ship has sailed), the idea that not everything has to be everywhere. Growth at all costs doesn't allow for "locally beloved," it must be shipped out everywhere. There was something lovely about visiting a new place and seeing things that you couldn't see anywhere else, that maybe, at best, you'd bring back for others as souvenirs.
I'd argue this is stronger than ever, in beer. You can't hardly throw a stone without it plopping into the pint of someone trying a self-distro local/regional pint. Self-distribution is more popular, and where some smaller level of distribution is called for breweries are starting their own to share with neighboring brewers (Block 15, Stoup, etc.)
What's in trouble is the *regional* brewer. Where they're risking getting too big & are subject to a different scope of market. Stone, New Belgium, Sierra Nevada scale breweries. Often when they started thinking "let's open another brewery on the opposite coast!" or similar, and got into big infrastructure costs because they wanted to be a national brewer.
Doubly so if they're relying on flagships, which are getting hardest-hit by competing beverages. Being able to plan on your target audience buying X pints & packs of your beer a year come hell or high water is a risky move these days, as that's more sensitive to market issues and just generally people shifting to other products.
I've seen a lot more smaller breweries see this pattern & shift their goal, holding off on "we must expand as much as we can" in favor of "this is how much we can sell in our current space, and how much of the local market we have".
posted by CrystalDave at 8:42 AM on July 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'd argue this is stronger than ever, in beer. You can't hardly throw a stone without it plopping into the pint of someone trying a self-distro local/regional pint. Self-distribution is more popular, and where some smaller level of distribution is called for breweries are starting their own to share with neighboring brewers (Block 15, Stoup, etc.)
What's in trouble is the *regional* brewer. Where they're risking getting too big & are subject to a different scope of market. Stone, New Belgium, Sierra Nevada scale breweries. Often when they started thinking "let's open another brewery on the opposite coast!" or similar, and got into big infrastructure costs because they wanted to be a national brewer.
Doubly so if they're relying on flagships, which are getting hardest-hit by competing beverages. Being able to plan on your target audience buying X pints & packs of your beer a year come hell or high water is a risky move these days, as that's more sensitive to market issues and just generally people shifting to other products.
I've seen a lot more smaller breweries see this pattern & shift their goal, holding off on "we must expand as much as we can" in favor of "this is how much we can sell in our current space, and how much of the local market we have".
posted by CrystalDave at 8:42 AM on July 13, 2023 [5 favorites]
We've definitely reach the stage where breweries are holding on for dear life and trying to keep their niche alive. You can't go shallow but wide like Anchor did, unless you're really filling a niche thing like mixed culture ferments. You can't be bigger without a ton of capital. If you stay small, then you're burning a lot of human capital to stay afloat for not much return. It's a tough business.
'F—king bulls—t': A shocked San Francisco reacts to the end of Anchor Brewing
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:30 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
'F—king bulls—t': A shocked San Francisco reacts to the end of Anchor Brewing
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:30 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
If we're sharing our favourite breweries, Mash Gang are mine. UK based NoLo brewery, been putting out ridiculously good brews.
posted by MattWPBS at 9:49 AM on July 13, 2023
posted by MattWPBS at 9:49 AM on July 13, 2023
I'm grateful for Yards here in Philly, along with Crime & Punishment which is in my neighborhood, and smaller regional outfits like Tonewood in NJ and Sand City Brewery in my hometown of Northport.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:02 AM on July 13, 2023
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:02 AM on July 13, 2023
Kitteh, do I have some hazy memory of you being involved with a podcast about women brewers?
I did have a podcast from 2016-2018 that focused exclusively on women working in craft beer. I got to know a lot of great ladies who work in the industry this way!
posted by Kitteh at 10:38 AM on July 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
I did have a podcast from 2016-2018 that focused exclusively on women working in craft beer. I got to know a lot of great ladies who work in the industry this way!
posted by Kitteh at 10:38 AM on July 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Look at the awful reinvention of Fat Tire and the spinoff of Voodoo Ranger into ... whatever it's become.
They're doing this with Bells too: the Oberon variants this summer were dogshit and unnecessary, but that's what these buyouts lead to.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:12 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
They're doing this with Bells too: the Oberon variants this summer were dogshit and unnecessary, but that's what these buyouts lead to.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:12 AM on July 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is what we've lost (not losing, that ship has sailed), the idea that not everything has to be everywhere.
Last month I was sitting around with someone, Talking Smart and sipping beer, and discussing how the idea of "enough" seems to have fallen out of favor -- in every industry and every part of culture.
No more regional successes: everything has to go national and then global. No more businesses out of a storefront: everything has to strive for endless expansion and growth. And quality always gets sacrificed to profitability and speed.
It's discouraging, you guys.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:48 AM on July 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
Last month I was sitting around with someone, Talking Smart and sipping beer, and discussing how the idea of "enough" seems to have fallen out of favor -- in every industry and every part of culture.
No more regional successes: everything has to go national and then global. No more businesses out of a storefront: everything has to strive for endless expansion and growth. And quality always gets sacrificed to profitability and speed.
It's discouraging, you guys.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:48 AM on July 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
Here's the other 8 of the original 'small giants:'
gone or acquired:
ECCO - backup alarms - Acquired by Clariance, now a large auto parts OEM
Selima Inc - bespoke dressmaker in Miami - no trace of it.
Rhythm & Hues - video sfx - went bankrupt in 2013, was acquired and operated by another media company (Prana Studios) until 2020 when it closed for the pandemic and never reopened.
questionable:
Hammerhead Productions - video sfx - seems to still exist in that form, unclear how active it has been since 2014/2015.
surviving:
Reell Precision - manufactures hinges, gears, springs etc - still operating as employee owned according to its linked in.
Goltz Group - still exists, not just a chain of frame stores, actually a family of small companies.
O.C. Tanner - "employee recognition software' (i.e. productivity monitoring, HR stuff), a tax-favored niche - still operating, though as of recently no longer led by anyone from the Tanner family. 1600 employees, international operations.
W.L. Butler - still a large commercial general contractor in CA. But hardly a modest operation. They build sizable and complex facilities.
Note that the author of the book has turned the concept into an ongoing business-motivational online seminar hustle.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:29 PM on July 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
gone or acquired:
ECCO - backup alarms - Acquired by Clariance, now a large auto parts OEM
Selima Inc - bespoke dressmaker in Miami - no trace of it.
Rhythm & Hues - video sfx - went bankrupt in 2013, was acquired and operated by another media company (Prana Studios) until 2020 when it closed for the pandemic and never reopened.
questionable:
Hammerhead Productions - video sfx - seems to still exist in that form, unclear how active it has been since 2014/2015.
surviving:
Reell Precision - manufactures hinges, gears, springs etc - still operating as employee owned according to its linked in.
Goltz Group - still exists, not just a chain of frame stores, actually a family of small companies.
O.C. Tanner - "employee recognition software' (i.e. productivity monitoring, HR stuff), a tax-favored niche - still operating, though as of recently no longer led by anyone from the Tanner family. 1600 employees, international operations.
W.L. Butler - still a large commercial general contractor in CA. But hardly a modest operation. They build sizable and complex facilities.
Note that the author of the book has turned the concept into an ongoing business-motivational online seminar hustle.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:29 PM on July 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
> he now-closed Pi Bar on Valencia (RIP) always had on tap, the owners having met while working at Anchor and Pi Bar being something of a hangout for Anchor employees.
Post street is not Valencia, I found your comment very confusing.
Anchor seemed like an OK company, but I've never much liked their beer. Like when I moved here people made a big deal about it, and I would occasionally get a six pack of it and never even touch it, which is an achievement for an alcoholic.
I mean it's a shame an old school brewery is going under, but ... it just wasn't good. Like, I don't know _anyone_ who was ever in to drinking anchor steam. Like, ever. I know people that have lived here since the 60s and don't bother getting it. Local diners would offer pints for $2 and i'd still just order something else.
posted by lkc at 10:17 PM on July 13, 2023
Post street is not Valencia, I found your comment very confusing.
Anchor seemed like an OK company, but I've never much liked their beer. Like when I moved here people made a big deal about it, and I would occasionally get a six pack of it and never even touch it, which is an achievement for an alcoholic.
I mean it's a shame an old school brewery is going under, but ... it just wasn't good. Like, I don't know _anyone_ who was ever in to drinking anchor steam. Like, ever. I know people that have lived here since the 60s and don't bother getting it. Local diners would offer pints for $2 and i'd still just order something else.
posted by lkc at 10:17 PM on July 13, 2023
Post street is not Valencia, I found your comment very confusing.
I didn't say it was on Post Street. I'm not really sure what you're getting at.
The owners of Pi Bar met while they were working at Anchor, and the only beer that they always had on tap was Liberty. Every other tap rotated. Lots of Anchor employees hung out at Pi Bar after their shifts as well.
posted by kdar at 11:43 PM on July 13, 2023
I didn't say it was on Post Street. I'm not really sure what you're getting at.
The owners of Pi Bar met while they were working at Anchor, and the only beer that they always had on tap was Liberty. Every other tap rotated. Lots of Anchor employees hung out at Pi Bar after their shifts as well.
posted by kdar at 11:43 PM on July 13, 2023
Ghidorah: "A Two-Hearted IPA was a rare sometimes treat on a trip back from Japan, something I deeply treasured, but more than likely, I've had my last one. All I can really hope is that New Glaurus manages to somehow keep on keeping on, and that I can still make time to get up to Wisconsin every time I come back to Chicago"
Bell's hasn't been destroyed by corporate ownership yet, as far as I know, even if it's coming. I have a photo of myself drinking a Two Hearted at the mouth of the Two Hearted River because why not? I thought New Glarus was doing fine - I generally try to pick up on my way to or from the in-laws place in WI - but last trip, I was surprised not to be able to find it at all in the 'Wisconsin Beers' section of the grocery store we usually stop at. Still available at the gas station we passed further into the boonies, maybe they just contracted distribution to move sales further away from the state line?
But there's a metric ton of good local breweries these days. I have long enjoyed drinking local, try to see what's made nearby that's worth a try when I'm traveling. These days it's quite rare for me to buy anything that isn't made in the upper Midwest because that's where I'm at, and why buy a nationally-distributed beer when I can find something locally that neither of my brothers can get in their neck of the woods?
(Of course my older brother, who is often in Germany for military reasons, SUPER ENJOYS sending me photos of huge steins of things I can only dream of trying. Jerk. But I love him for it. Wonder how many of those beers he's enjoyed are also owned by multinational conglomerates?)
posted by caution live frogs at 12:00 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Bell's hasn't been destroyed by corporate ownership yet, as far as I know, even if it's coming. I have a photo of myself drinking a Two Hearted at the mouth of the Two Hearted River because why not? I thought New Glarus was doing fine - I generally try to pick up on my way to or from the in-laws place in WI - but last trip, I was surprised not to be able to find it at all in the 'Wisconsin Beers' section of the grocery store we usually stop at. Still available at the gas station we passed further into the boonies, maybe they just contracted distribution to move sales further away from the state line?
But there's a metric ton of good local breweries these days. I have long enjoyed drinking local, try to see what's made nearby that's worth a try when I'm traveling. These days it's quite rare for me to buy anything that isn't made in the upper Midwest because that's where I'm at, and why buy a nationally-distributed beer when I can find something locally that neither of my brothers can get in their neck of the woods?
(Of course my older brother, who is often in Germany for military reasons, SUPER ENJOYS sending me photos of huge steins of things I can only dream of trying. Jerk. But I love him for it. Wonder how many of those beers he's enjoyed are also owned by multinational conglomerates?)
posted by caution live frogs at 12:00 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't really follow the craft beer industry but I do drink the products and one thing I have noticed in the last 5 years here in Chicago is a steady decline in beers from outside the local midwest area at my local Binny's booze superstore. I went from being able to get some of the very best beers in America to only being able to get local beers and the major national brands. All the great little esoteric breweries from all over the country just seem to have disappeared from the shelves.
posted by srboisvert at 12:16 PM on July 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 12:16 PM on July 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Mod note: btw, Dr.Curare's comment and this post have been included on the sidebar
posted by taz (staff) at 1:54 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:54 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
In the mid 1990's, I heard a call-in radio interview with Fritz Maytag and one thing that struck me is that he really, really liked all varieties of beer. With regards to American pilsners, he called them lawn mower beers. After cutting the lawn on a hot day, if you drank a stout, you'd probably puke, but a pilsners goes down easily and is refreshing. His point being that every beer has irs place.
I started home brewing in 2000 or so and absolutely a home brewer can make better beer than a commercial outfit. The hard part is to do it consistently. Over the past 20 years, I've been refining my technique and equipment in order to be more consistent. The changes I've made that make the biggest difference are: using filtered water (I installed a 3 stage filter on the sink), using Cajun cooker for the boil (heats faster, allows larger brew pots), "brew in a bag" (eliminates sparging, let's me use more grain), using ice to chill the wort (it's also filtered- drops the temp faster). All these have markedly improved the beer I make.
A few years ago when Seamus Blackley and Richard Bowman extracted yeast from Egyptian brewing vessels, I contacted them and asked if I could get a sample. They sent me a petri dish via FedEx. My local brew store propagated it into usable quantity and I started brewing with it at the start of the pandemic. I started with something that was supposed to be what ancient Egyptians brewed (all wheat - Einkorn and spelt, dukkah instead of hops, date syrup) which was fascinating, but I didn't care for it as I don't particularly all wheat beers. Then I made a stout, a kolsch, an Irish red, an IPA, and an English butter over the course of a year, harvesting yeast from each batch for the next. Eventually it went funny, as is the way of things. Every batch I kegged but set aside a few bottles to age and towards the end, I invited a dear friend of mine over who got me into brewing and we drank them all. It was so wonderful to share my experiments. All of them were good beers except for the Irish Red, which was an excellent beer.
The point is, it's a hobby and any hobbyist can do as well or better than a pro, just not at industrial scale and consistency. Also, small local breweries can be very helpful to home brewers. I used to volunteer at Berkshire Brewing in Deerfield run their bottling line in exchange for lunch and a case of beer. One of the founders told me that if I brought a mason jar, he'd give me some of their yeast. Don't be afraid to ask.
Also, some small breweries are decidedly worse than what I do. There was a local we tried and got a sampler flight. Of 8 beers, 7 were terrible. One of those 7 had a strong bandaid aroma and taste (phenols) and should never have been served. I found out through the local rumor mill that their process was akin to the three stooges making beer.
posted by plinth at 6:40 AM on July 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
I started home brewing in 2000 or so and absolutely a home brewer can make better beer than a commercial outfit. The hard part is to do it consistently. Over the past 20 years, I've been refining my technique and equipment in order to be more consistent. The changes I've made that make the biggest difference are: using filtered water (I installed a 3 stage filter on the sink), using Cajun cooker for the boil (heats faster, allows larger brew pots), "brew in a bag" (eliminates sparging, let's me use more grain), using ice to chill the wort (it's also filtered- drops the temp faster). All these have markedly improved the beer I make.
A few years ago when Seamus Blackley and Richard Bowman extracted yeast from Egyptian brewing vessels, I contacted them and asked if I could get a sample. They sent me a petri dish via FedEx. My local brew store propagated it into usable quantity and I started brewing with it at the start of the pandemic. I started with something that was supposed to be what ancient Egyptians brewed (all wheat - Einkorn and spelt, dukkah instead of hops, date syrup) which was fascinating, but I didn't care for it as I don't particularly all wheat beers. Then I made a stout, a kolsch, an Irish red, an IPA, and an English butter over the course of a year, harvesting yeast from each batch for the next. Eventually it went funny, as is the way of things. Every batch I kegged but set aside a few bottles to age and towards the end, I invited a dear friend of mine over who got me into brewing and we drank them all. It was so wonderful to share my experiments. All of them were good beers except for the Irish Red, which was an excellent beer.
The point is, it's a hobby and any hobbyist can do as well or better than a pro, just not at industrial scale and consistency. Also, small local breweries can be very helpful to home brewers. I used to volunteer at Berkshire Brewing in Deerfield run their bottling line in exchange for lunch and a case of beer. One of the founders told me that if I brought a mason jar, he'd give me some of their yeast. Don't be afraid to ask.
Also, some small breweries are decidedly worse than what I do. There was a local we tried and got a sampler flight. Of 8 beers, 7 were terrible. One of those 7 had a strong bandaid aroma and taste (phenols) and should never have been served. I found out through the local rumor mill that their process was akin to the three stooges making beer.
posted by plinth at 6:40 AM on July 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also, I've made GF beer. The challenge is getting body in it. I used sorghum syrup, cracked corn and toasted buckwheat modeling the recipe after a pre prohibition style American pale ale. Best to buy your own hand cranked mill for the corn and buckwheat.
Barring that, Glutenberg is a fine GF beer. My daughter has celiac, so use it in the batter for fish and chips.
posted by plinth at 7:02 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Barring that, Glutenberg is a fine GF beer. My daughter has celiac, so use it in the batter for fish and chips.
posted by plinth at 7:02 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I will also add that one of the biggest changes in small brewing are relatively cheap canning machines. You can buy a turnkey rig that does 10-20 cans per minute for roughly $50K which is pretty damn cheap. Compared with the set up they used at Berkshire which was human run and used bottles this is incredibly fast. BBC is now shipping in cans instead of bottles. I'm not surprised.
posted by plinth at 7:23 AM on July 15, 2023
posted by plinth at 7:23 AM on July 15, 2023
I have a lot of thoughts about homebrewing and beer - shocking, I know. I wrote some of my thoughts last month after receiving an award. (I hope buried this deep in the thread, this is ok as a self-link. if not, yank it away!)
I Ain't Dead Yet
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:10 AM on July 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I Ain't Dead Yet
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:10 AM on July 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Rhode Island's Narragansett Beer Spearheads Efforts To Save Anchor Brewing
So far, it is just a petition. I would hope that there's at least a few people at Sapporo who remember why they got in the beer business (hint: not just the money) and might help with efforts to try to save the brewery.
posted by eye of newt at 10:21 AM on July 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
So far, it is just a petition. I would hope that there's at least a few people at Sapporo who remember why they got in the beer business (hint: not just the money) and might help with efforts to try to save the brewery.
posted by eye of newt at 10:21 AM on July 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I signed that petition as well. DOn't think it has a hope of changing anything, but we'll just have to see. My guess is, barring a miracle of who knows what, the Potrero brewery is toast, soon to be converted into the "Anchor Lofts" or some such.
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:30 AM on July 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:30 AM on July 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Fyi drewbage1847 self links are always allowed in comments. They are only verboten on the front page.
posted by Mitheral at 1:44 PM on July 17, 2023
posted by Mitheral at 1:44 PM on July 17, 2023
Thanks - it's always a fine dance and I just try to play it easy.
Having said that - if anyone wants to talk brewing/homebrewing, I can roll for days. Last time I checked my run time estimator - you could listen to my podcast for 16 days straight. Please don't do that, I don't think that would be safe for anyone.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:15 PM on July 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Having said that - if anyone wants to talk brewing/homebrewing, I can roll for days. Last time I checked my run time estimator - you could listen to my podcast for 16 days straight. Please don't do that, I don't think that would be safe for anyone.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:15 PM on July 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Update: Several local investors want to save Anchor. One of the potential investors is Mike Walsh of Structure Capital who also wants to open up local investment
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:21 PM on July 18, 2023
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:21 PM on July 18, 2023
Sounds like the Anchor Brewing Union is throwing their hat in the ring:
In a brief letter sent Wednesday evening and shared with VinePair, the business agent for Anchor Brewing Union advised Sapporo USA president Mike Minami “that workers of Anchor Brewing have met, discussed, and decided to launch an effort to purchase the brewery and run it as a worker co-op.”posted by jomato at 9:25 AM on July 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
And like Anchor is considering the offer.
“We have received an e-mail from Anchor’s Union spokesperson stating that the ‘workers of Anchor Brewing have met, discussed and decided to launch an effort to purchase the brewery. Given our deep respect for the Anchor Union and our team members, should our employees put forward a bona fide, legally binding offer to buy the company, one that includes a verifiable source of funds, we would gladly consider it.”posted by box at 10:21 AM on July 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
« Older Life Lessons in Calgary | We Guide You Home Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Union busting bullshit motherfuckers
posted by latkes at 11:09 AM on July 12, 2023 [24 favorites]