The final time San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Firm confronted chapter, a rich inheritor stepped in to avoid wasting the brewery—and should have modified the course of the whole American beer business within the course of.
There will not be an analogous reprieve this time. Anchor, initially based in 1896, introduced this week that it will be shutting down for good. “The impacts of the pandemic, inflation, particularly in San Francisco, and a extremely aggressive market left the corporate with no possibility however to make this unhappy resolution to stop operations,” Sam Singer, a spokesman for the corporate, mentioned in a press release.
The extremely aggressive craft beer market which may have performed a job in Anchor’s ultimate demise, satirically, may not exist with out the brewery, which survived San Francisco’s devastating 1906 earthquake, Prohibition, and among the darkest days of American beer historical past.
It survived the near-bout with chapter in 1965 due to Fritz Maytag, the great-grandson of the founding father of the Maytag Company, who purchased a majority share within the brewery as a result of he preferred the beer, then set about making it higher. In an period when macro-breweries making yellow, watery lagers dominated America’s beer market, Anchor’s flagship beer—Anchor Steam Beer, with its distinctive copper shade and foggy flavors—definitely stood out.
“We went again to essentially the most elementary, conventional kind of brewing philosophy,” Maytag instructed Motive in a 2010 interview. Beneath his steerage, Anchor embraced a mix of conventional beer making “mixed with trendy meals processing and tools.”
Anchor’s best-known beer is an ideal illustration of that combination. It is a trendy tackle a mode of beer—referred to as “steam beer” as a result of it’s fermented at the next temperature than most different kinds of beer—that was initially produced within the days earlier than breweries had entry to synthetic refrigeration.
To achieve popularity of making a superior product that buyers take pleasure in is the objective of any businessman. To encourage others to do the identical? That is what cements Anchor’s (and Maytag’s) place within the pantheon of American beer making.
By the mid-Nineteen Seventies, with Anchor’s status and enterprise rising on the West Coast, it grew to become a hub for a brand new wave of brewers focused on experimenting with new types of beer. Amongst these was Ken Grossman, who would go on to discovered the Sierra Nevada Brewing Firm in 1980 and assist kick off America’s craft beer revolution.
“Within the ’60s and within the early ’70s, I by no means dreamed that there could be some other little breweries like ours,” Maytag instructed Motive in that 2010 interview. “Solely later, to my amazement when among the new little breweries unusual [wrong word?] up did I come to the conclusion that what we had carried out was potential for others to do.”
In line with the Beer Affiliation, an business group, there have been solely 163 breweries within the nation when Maytag saved Anchor from chapter in 1965. By the early Nineteen Eighties, there have been fewer than 100. At the moment, there are over 9,000.
Maytag and Anchor saved alive the flame—a flame lit beneath a brew kettle, after all—of unbiased craft beer in America. It is maybe a bit ironic that the corporate is now shutting down partially due to the strong competitors in a market that it helped to energise.
As The New York Instances notes, mid-level breweries like Anchor, which grew massive sufficient to have an honest nationwide footprint however stay smaller than the likes of Budweiser and Coors, are significantly susceptible proper now. They face aggressive strain from the bigger breweries however are more and more dropping market share on the native facet too, as smaller craft breweries proceed to proliferate and appeal to new clients.
In that regard, the demise of Anchor Brewing just isn’t a tragic story, however one thing to be cheered: proof that artistic destruction stays an indefatigable power.
“There’s extra creativity and extra integrity and extra selection in America than in the remainder of the world mixed,” Maytag mentioned in 2010, shortly earlier than he offered the corporate to Japan-based Sapporo.
So increase a glass—there’s nonetheless some iconic Anchor Steam Beer on the market within the provide chains—after which pour one out for the top of a very nice entrepreneurial story.
