I don’t know anyone that loved the Christmas ale. It was fine if you were already drunk, which I suppose makes sense for Christmas though.
Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
41–50 of 309 posts
Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
#42Old timers like me remember when you couldn't buy Coors east of Kansas City.
Similarly, I remember the Snowbirds and Carpetbaggers excitement over the Yuengling brewery in Florida. Folks bringing cases home on trips.
Something about those old times regional beers with “no taste” fascinates me as much if not more than all the craft ones. Like drinking a time capsule being able to relate with someone from an oddly specific time and place.
Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
#43Earlier 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.
Beer is incredibly difficult to keep shelf-stable. International beers, unless very specific efforts are taken, will taste off. I heard a story that Austrian beer enthusiasts just assumed American beers tasted "skunky" because that's how they tasted after importing them. Time, temperature, and light are enemies. Anheuser-Busch has a dozen breweries across the US.
I'm not a fan of hops, but the PNW grows 96% of hops in the US--so it makes sense local breweries up there are known for IPA. Historically, beer styles leaned into local water mineral content; Pilsners from Germany/Czech Republic and Stout/Porter from Britain/Ireland.
Regional wines (local wines shipped widely) make sense and local beers do, too.
Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
#44Personally, I have so many great, local breweries, I never think to get anything from out of state, usually not even out-of-city. This sounds like a reasonable move seeing the proliferation of great beers.
Living Colorado... I pretty much feel the same way.
Within 15-20 minutes from my house there's Avery, Upslope, Left-hand, Oscar Blue's, Fritz, Wibby, Asher, Finkel & Garf, 300 Suns, Beyond the Mt., Sanitas, Wild Provisions, Vision Quest, Twisted Pine, Uhl's, etc.
All of them are at least decent... some of them are world class.
Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
#45Earlier 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.
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 Heinek…
Orrrr people have different tastes, and that’s ok. And generally the craft beer people are a bit snotty about it.
Heineken is a fine mass produced beer, but there are tens of beers that I would prefer.
Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
#46Personally, I have so many great, local breweries, I never think to get anything from out of state, usually not even out-of-city. This sounds like a reasonable move seeing the proliferation of great beers.
I also find it extremely disconcerting (though basically in a good way) when I’m traveling and none of my local favorites are available. Yeah, of course I’ll take the opportunity to try something new and local, but it feels weird these days having local favorites that aren’t part of the national monoculture and just aren’t available elsewhere. I like it!
Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
#47Earlier 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.
Water is an important ingredient in beer that affects the taste. Soft water is best for some beers, like Czech pilsner and similar traditional lagers, where as hard, mineral-laden water produces the best dark beers. The water in Dublin, Ireland is, for example, famously alkaline.
Of course it's possible, to a limited extent, to alter the mineral content of the water, but it gets expensive.
Hops, of course, are a key ingredient in beer, and they definitely do have terroir. The Saaz hops grown in the US are not identical to Saaz from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
https://beerconnoisseur.com/articles/earth-best-water-brewin...
Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Heinek…
Well, one local example relevant to TFA and that I know of is the Bay Area. Anchor, Drake's, 21st Ammendment, Lagunitas, Das Brew, Altamont, and Fieldwork all make better tasting beer than Heineken.
Funny, Lagunitas is now owned by the Heineken company. Heineken became the second largest brewer in the world after the merger of Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller.
Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
#49Earlier 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.
> Local beers are just some weird competition to see who can make the hopiest bitterest beer.
It wasn’t always this way. I remember when our local breweries had a wide range of regular styles, and many specialized in whatever weird quirky thing they were into. That got me to explore Trappist styles, Flemish style sours, a whole bunch of English styles that I didn’t like at first but eventually became my thing because they’re so subtle, and a huge variety of different adjuncts regardless of hoppiness.
Local beer wasn’t (usually) about the locality of where it was brewed and fermented, it was about the locality of the humans involved and their whims. I think this still exists in some places, but IPA has basically become the “other beer” besides lager everywhere and it’s really a damn shame. And it’s basically ruined beer for me. I actually like IPA, but I’d lose interest anything that becomes so uniform.
Re: Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale
#50I live in New England. There isn’t a single brewery in any New England state that would cause an uproar if it ceased to sell beer tomorrow. Sure I have some preferred beers but they are all interchangeable in the big picture. Such is progress - there is no more regional taste, only trend. Even the bottle conditioned beer you stand in line for on vacation - a bottle of Duvel will be reliably better and probably cheape…
Sam Adams and and Trillium would both probably cause a bigger uproar than this Anchor Brewing company, which honestly I have never heard of not being in California.