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Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

sfgate.com

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Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#21

Post by dfjklseldklk »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #18
rationalist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have so many great, local breweries My city has a lot, but I personally can't share in them. I will instantly vomit if I drink any local brews (in any locale). Same with whiskey. I can drink nationally-distributed beers and vodka with no ill-effects. I have no idea why. I'm jumping on this comment because I imagine there are some HN readers that might have a theory and I would be very interested in hearing them.

I hate local beers. Local wine makes sense, there is terroir, a sense of place etc. Local beers are just some weird competition to see who can make the hopiest bitterest beer. I don't want to try a new lager every time I cross county lines, when I want beer I want something reliable.

I agree the style of beers made "locally" is weird, but the justification for local beer, on keg at least, is that it does seem hard to transport them successfully. In the UK beers do taste best on tap when you're within about 50 miles of the brewery. I'm sure they could be transported further safely, but in practice them almost never are.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#22

Post by eyelidlessness »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #9
eyelidlessness wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, despite living in one of the earlier craft brew havens (Seattle). Anchor Steam was already a unique offering when I happened on it ~15 years ago, and its uniqueness has only been more pronounced as the craft(ish) market has consolidated around IPAs. Anchor Porter isn’t nearly so unique a style, but it’s an exceptional one in the category and has consistently been my preference over local porters even when…

Not passing judgement on the quality of Anchor Steam. But the OP is absolutely right - there are now good to great breweries pretty much everywhere in the US. It’s hard to be a national beer company if you aren’t humongous. People aren’t even looking at your stuff. The beer section at the gas station near my house is 50% local and 50% watery stuff. I have no idea if they carry Anchor Steam or not because I don’t look…

Yeah I do agree that being a national craft brewery is tough, and I don’t begrudge Anchor leaving the national market. I don’t even begrudge Elysian entering it by selling to AB (though lots of folks here do). My disagreement is only with “no reason” to buy Anchor. There’s a glut of high quality beer on the market, but very little of it is a reasonable substitute for what Anchor brews, and I have gone out of my way when it might be stocked, even though I know that I’m an outlier in even my own competitive local market.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#23

Post by prottog »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #18
rationalist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have so many great, local breweries My city has a lot, but I personally can't share in them. I will instantly vomit if I drink any local brews (in any locale). Same with whiskey. I can drink nationally-distributed beers and vodka with no ill-effects. I have no idea why. I'm jumping on this comment because I imagine there are some HN readers that might have a theory and I would be very interested in hearing them.

I hate local beers. Local wine makes sense, there is terroir, a sense of place etc. Local beers are just some weird competition to see who can make the hopiest bitterest beer. I don't want to try a new lager every time I cross county lines, when I want beer I want something reliable.

People get it in their heads that small and local means good or at least better than the stuff mass-produced by MegaCorp, but that's not always the case. I think beer is a case where it's hard to beat Big Beer.

Heineken, the second-biggest brewery in the world, moved 231.2 million hectoliters of beer in 2021[0], or nearly 19,000 acre-feet of beer (!). How many locally-produced lagers actually taste better than Heineken?

[0]: https://www.craftbrewingbusiness.com/business-marketing/the-...

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#24

Post by 8note »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #18
rationalist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have so many great, local breweries My city has a lot, but I personally can't share in them. I will instantly vomit if I drink any local brews (in any locale). Same with whiskey. I can drink nationally-distributed beers and vodka with no ill-effects. I have no idea why. I'm jumping on this comment because I imagine there are some HN readers that might have a theory and I would be very interested in hearing them.

I hate local beers. Local wine makes sense, there is terroir, a sense of place etc. Local beers are just some weird competition to see who can make the hopiest bitterest beer. I don't want to try a new lager every time I cross county lines, when I want beer I want something reliable.

Depending on the beer it also has terroir, from catching wild yeasts.

Same thing with beers made from local ingredients

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#25

Post by TylerE »

The article buried the lede.

"Anchor, founded in 1896, was saved from bankruptcy in 1965 by longtime owner Fritz Maytag, and _sold to Sapporo in 2017_, Singer said."

It ceased to be an independent local brewer almost a decade ago. The corporate overlords are doing what corporate overlords always do.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#26

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

Back in college, my friends and I got a pony keg of the Merry Christmas and Happy New Year ale -- probably our biggest beer mistake. We had to force ourselves to finish it and punished each other with beer pong just to empty the damn thing. I don't think I could ever touch that beer again.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#27

Post by OJFord »

dfjklseldklk wrote: post #21
0xB31B1B wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate local beers. Local wine makes sense, there is terroir, a sense of place etc. Local beers are just some weird competition to see who can make the hopiest bitterest beer. I don't want to try a new lager every time I cross county lines, when I want beer I want something reliable.

I agree the style of beers made "locally" is weird, but the justification for local beer, on keg at least, is that it does seem hard to transport them successfully. In the UK beers do taste best on tap when you're within about 50 miles of the brewery. I'm sure they could be transported further safely, but in practice them almost never are.

I'm with GP on reliability though - I'd rather have a can of a known bitter than a local 'IPA' on tap that I don't know (and the other side of the bar doesn't care, or share a common language to decide) if is a 'proper' IPA, or one of these very pale, extremely fizzy things that seem to be in vogue and call themselves IPAs, when to me they're closer to a lager and almost any (non IPA-style) bitter would've been closer to what I expected. Sometimes I can tell from the label it will (or I fear it will, so don't try and can't say for sure) be like that, but certainly not always, and that's not always practical.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#28

Post by mikestew »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #7
version_five wrote: post #4

I remember getting Anchor Steam in California nearly 20 years ago, having been told about it by a relative as something to try. And having been happy to try a different tasting beer. The other California one I liked was Sierra Nevada pale ale. I feel like that was a much more innocent time. Now no matter where you are, there's a pile of competing craft beers, trying to out do one another across different dimensions (…

> trying to out do one another across different dimensions (though mostly hops) In places with younger craft markets, it's like an even split between hops and extreme naming/label graphics. Here in Seattle, beer names are like Obscure Mythology Reference and you might enjoy the Wikipedia hole it starts you on while you imbibe. The first craft brew I remember seeing visiting my original home state, Virginia, was liter…

I was just thinking that this weekend in the Seattle area as we wandered the aisles for six for the wife. It’s either an attempt to put the scariest-looking skull(s) on the label, or $SOMETHING $SEXUAL_REFERENCE $FARM_ANIMAL (e. g., Ass-Kickin’ Horny Goat Stout).

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#29

Post by flyinghamster »

Sometimes a brewer realizes that concentrating on their core market makes more sense than trying to compete on crowded store shelves nationwide. New Glarus Brewing in Wisconsin is famous for refusing to distribute out-of-state. It's always worth taking a case home if I take a roadtrip.

Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

#30

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

TylerE wrote: post #25

The article buried the lede. "Anchor, founded in 1896, was saved from bankruptcy in 1965 by longtime owner Fritz Maytag, and _sold to Sapporo in 2017_, Singer said." It ceased to be an independent local brewer almost a decade ago. The corporate overlords are doing what corporate overlords always do.

> The corporate overlords are doing what corporate overlords always do.

Killing what doesn't make money? If this was profitable what exactly are the 'corporate overlords' achieving here?

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