No, I didn’t. Same question as before…should I buy something I don’t like?
Looking at the recipes above, if they’re accurate, you can see that they’re fairly old school. I like that but many beer drinkers have moved on. They were probably cutting edge originally but now they have been overtaken by the Haze Craze, IPA(s), newer hops, etc. The market moves and the brewery must move with it or be passed by.
I think it’s sad due to the nostalgia of the historic brewery, but nostalgia only goes so far and BLUF: sales pay the bills.
Was at some friends’ house in Cupertino recently. I was offered a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and said yes. It was wonderful.
Before that we spent some days in Paso Robles. The Double Barrel Ale at Firestone Walker was sublime.
Revisit some of the old classics and you might be pleased at how good they are.
yeah, i remember liberty ale and id probably try the odd anchor brew if i could get it, but it hasnt been sold up here in ??? idk how long.
also those fancy unique bottles may have been an unnecessary cost. someone mentioned on the first page the simple fact that their brewing space was not something easily expandable or upgradeable is also an unfortunate reality.
Same here.
I’m sad to see a brewery like this go away, but I wasn’t a fan of the style, personally. I do go out of my way (literally or by paying a bit more) to spend my coin at local businesses or at smaller shops that I like. But not if it’s a product that I wouldn’t normally be purchasing.
They never had very good market penetration anywhere that I’ve lived. So, I never bought them much bc I never saw them much.
I’m not sure I ever saw a Christmas or Foghorn in person.
They’ve always been in that class of “beers you read about but never meet in the wild” — like Westvleteren, Pliny, or Avec Les Bons Voeux.
Old guys like me have had all of those. It may have been easier back in the day.
I saw this a couple days ago. Definitely sad. As others have mentioned, Steam was also one of my introductions to craft beer. The last time I had it was probably a little over a year ago. The drop in quality was definitely noticeable compared to what it once was. I was also a fan of the Christmas and the Porter.
Am I reading those clone recipes correctly??
almost 19% C40 on the Foghorn barleywine?
and 12.6% C40 in the steam ale??
I don’t think I have ever tried those beers (so I don’t know what they taste like), but I have certainly heard a lot about them.
These recipes were given to the magazine from the brewery in 2014, so it’s probably really accurate in sense of calculations, but I’ve never brewed/compared them. They are very old world recipes and I used to add that much, and more, C malts back when I started brewing. I use a lot less now but times be times.
On that note, I will be brewing at least Steam and California Lager… I brought back a lot of California Lager yeast from HBC for some reason lol
Yep, I’d say that’s accurate.
I really dislike this take, which comes up every time a brewery closes. (WSJ not terribly long ago was blaming young people who drink less for closing bars down.) It’s not our job as consumers to prop up businesses or to Denny’s point, buy products we don’t like to help them out. I’ve never been a big fan of Anchor’s beers so I didn’t buy them.
More generally on the subject:
It’s ok to feel remorse for a legacy brewery with a romantic location that reached the end of the line, but it’s not our fault. We didn’t control the recipes, or what beers they brewed, or how they marketed it. That rebranding a few years ago was terrible. They completely ignored over a decade of trends towards other styles and away from crystal malts. As a homebrewer I can respect commitment to brewing what they want and keeping the beers the way they want but that’s why I’m a homebrewer and not a pro brewer.
I’ve seen some reports this week that Anchor was in financial distress before the sale and that’s why it was sold, rather than because nobody in the family wanted to brew beer. That’s not too surprising given that craft beer at the top of the market was years into cutting crystal malts out of recipes, the rise of hazy IPAs, sours, barrel programs, pastry stouts and stress on local breweries. Those are all things that cut out breweries like Anchor from the market.
I don’t know what the future is for the Anchor brand, if anything, but I hope the brewery remains intact and sold to investors who want to relish the heritage of the location. That’s probably unlikely given the cost of real estate in the area and the difficulty brewing on an older system like that.
Pliny is more broadly distributed now that RRBC has Windsor pumping out IPAs. Not sure where you are but you could probably get somebody to ship it to you along with the IMO superior Blind Pig.
Avec Les Bons Voeux is seasonal but anywhere that orders a lot of Dupont should get it in the fall or winter. Total Wine and grocery stores that stock imported beers often have it. If Whole Foods is in your area, sometimes they have it.
Westvleteren is still go to Belgium or order it from Belgium. You can order all three at times from some of the Belgian bottle shops but you should order a full box to make the freight cost a little more palatable. IMO also order enough to stash a few because they will improve with time.
You can’t blame consumers for not buying enough beer to keep a brewery of Anchor’s scale open. The fact is that the current craft beer market favors local and hyperlocal breweries. Regional breweries are all but extinct. National brands can only hold their ground if they have a big-selling flagship (and Anchor Steam isn’t selling the numbers of SNPA, Boston Lager, Yuengling, etc.), or if they keep interest up by continually innovating (Anchor isn’t doing that, either). Unfortunately, the ship has sailed for Anchor, and no doubt we’ll see more of these before the tide turns back to beer at some unspecified point in the future.
I think we need to get away from the blame everyone is thinking being thrown. I will admit, I have only been buying the Christmas beer but I haven’t even been happy with the last few releases. Have to make a product people want. I know where I spend my money. That’s why Fat Tire died and redesigned awhile Abbey died and Voodoo Ranger took over. I used to fanboy for New Belgium hard. Now it’s nothing. It’s just having to make what people want. Evolution.
The Christmas Ale was always hit or miss to me. It was whatever they threw in the wood chipper that year. Some people loved it no matter what, but it wasn’t my jam. YMMV
true, i think this is a new phase of craft breweries, but also beer in general where we now are actually at the point of having “extinct beer” recipes made within our lifetime, rather than looking back 100 or more years. “anchor” will live on as a legend with its story and brew recipes always available for homebrewers to call upon. and respect to fritz maytag for doing what he did.
i brewed some west coast old school style pale ale and IPAs in may/june and tasting them now, its been so long since i had that hard bitter edge and frankly i lost my taste for it. the original BITTER BITTER IPA phenomenon may soon be a memory only kept alive by homebrewers as well to a degree ?
It seems we were seeing west coast IPAs drying out and moving past the IBU wars before hazy took over. A lot of the newer west coast IPAs I’m seeing around are labeling themselves juicy west coast or new style west coast which use the newer hops and are more bitter than hazy but not shooting for bitterness for bitterness’s sake. Seems like trying to pick up where west coast IPA was and moving it forward. I’m not sure if it’s happening elsewhere but I’m not seeing the old crystal heavy, super bitter IPAs at any local brewery pumping out west coast IPAs. Personally I’m not excited to see IBU wars II.
I agree–some of the older craft beer styles will be kept alive mostly in homebrewing circles. I just have a hard time seeing a lot of breweries rushing to put out amber ales, middling strength stouts/porters, or American wheats these days. Heck, outside of Dale’s I can barely find a pale ale around town.
i know i keep replying to this thread, but re: mid strength amber ales - lol, there are variants on this that i actually really love and was just thinking about formulating for fall brewing just a few minutes ago.
english yeast, colour through biscuit/amber malt + c60 up to c120 mixes and also a bit of oak. one of my fave beers i ever made was this kind of grist, with maris otter as the base around 5.9% ABV. im thinking sort of like those now very oudated and unwanted high 5% “ESB” type ales. they can be done really well IMHO.
Well someone is at least interested. I’m sure there will be others…