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Anchor Brewing Company ends national distribution, kills Christmas Ale

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

#61

Post by Blinco »

ecshafer wrote: post #50
subpixel wrote: post #40

I 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.

Agree with you on those two. Not really the same vein but I'd throw Narragansett in as well

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

#62

Post by kevinmchugh »

cratermoon wrote: post #47
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.

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…

It's trivial and cheap to make water harder, home brewers do it all the time to replicate specific styles. It's more difficult to make hard water soft.

Also while hops have terroir, hops are dried and vacuum sealed and kept cold so that they can be shipped with no change in flavor. (Except of course for once-a-year wet hop beers which truly are very local)

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

#63

Post by Sivart13 »

dilap wrote: post #56

They did an ungodly-bad rebrand and suddenly just looked like every other beer.

Counterpoint, I'd wager they were already on a downward trajectory which is what drove both the sale to Sapporo and the rebrand.

The alternative to the rebrand might not have been sticking with the existing style forever, but shutting the place down.

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

#64

Post by kevinmchugh »

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.

Beer is best fresh, and usually the freshest beer is the closest beer.

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

#65

Post by AndrewKemendo »

>sold to Sapporo in 2017

Ah, I was wondering where the pressure was coming from.

The idea that this 150 year old brewery is closing down a truly cornerstone beer in craft beer history because the label art is expensive - despite weathering untold recessions and tough periods - strains credulity

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

#66

Post by PhasmaFelis »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #30
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?

Killing what doesn't make enough money. To a corporation, a product line that sells reliably and consistently year after year is a failure unless it can be turned into something that pushes the stock price ever upward.

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

#67

Post by kodt »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #30
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?

I think craft beer fans would argue that their Christmas Ale is iconic and provides much of their respect as a brand and that discontinuing just pushes the brand further into irrelevancy.

Pulling back to California makes sense of sales aren’t strong enough, but also killing off a beloved brand seems that it could hurt in the long run.

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

#68

Post by nwiswell »

wincy wrote: post #55

It’s weird that there’s a whole culture around all these craft beers that seems interesting to me but every time I drink anything labeled beer or ale or whatever it is, I feel hot and am basically overcome with a berserker rage (I don’t know how else to explain it, I get really agitated and feel like I’m in flight or fight and want to fight, and it’s like my brain is on fire) within minutes of drinking any sort of be…

If it's because of the hops, you will probably have less of a reaction if you drink a sour beer, which typically have a lot less hops. You could give that a try as a partition test. You might be able to find a Lambic or Gose at the supermarket, they're reasonably commonplace.

The Gruit style contains no hops at all, but it's uncommon.

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

#69

Post by jghn »

ecshafer wrote: post #50
subpixel wrote: post #40

I 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.

I’m from the same area as you so geography isn’t the issue.

They’re pretty notable, arguably they started the craft beer movement

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

#70

Post by pkulak »

prottog wrote: post #23
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.

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…

All of them?
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