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SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

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Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#201

Post by stickfigure »

Rapzid wrote: post #194
bartread wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is an important point but, with that said, I'd suggest that perhaps the reason Anchor were struggling is they didn't really innovate. Rather they rested on the laurels of that 127 year heritage. Certainly a very personal opinion but the first time I tried Anchor beers sometime in the noughties I was underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong: they're certainly better than Bud, Coors, etc., but as a Brit coming fro…

Their Porter is fantastic and on par with Fuller's.

I love porters but they're getting hard to find. Every supermarket is wall-to-wall IPAs. I assume they know what sells, so apparently that's what the market wants right now. You can't make a living brewing porters.

I would be a lot more disappointed with this turn of events if I had access to their porter. But the ubiquitous steam beer was never one of my favorites.

Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#202

Post by gffrd »

nilespotter wrote: post #154
crazygringo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think stopping drinking was a response to exactly that -- it got out of control, then people quit. At least in NYC that's when we saw the first non-alcoholic "liquor" stores emerge. Because people still want a sophisticated treat to sip to mark the end of the day.

Got any example of this new wave of sophisticated non-alcoholic liqour?

Try your local health & wellness shop. (you know: the place you get non-FDA supplements, expensive toothpaste, and anything Himalayan salt)

Mine has had a non-alcoholic wine + spirits section growing steadily over the past 12 months from a couple random bottles, to a full floor-to-ceiling section of 40+ options.

Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#203

Post by giantg2 »

ecocentrik wrote: post #191
bartread wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is an important point but, with that said, I'd suggest that perhaps the reason Anchor were struggling is they didn't really innovate. Rather they rested on the laurels of that 127 year heritage. Certainly a very personal opinion but the first time I tried Anchor beers sometime in the noughties I was underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong: they're certainly better than Bud, Coors, etc., but as a Brit coming fro…

This news has nothing to do with lack of innovation. The entire beer market is currently contracting. Also, not everything needs to innovate. Every field needs a canon of notable creations that have stood the test of centuries or millennia and beer brewing is no exception.

I don't know. It seems a mix of traditional and innovation does well. Yuengling seems to be a good example of a small brand becoming regional and now almost national. They have their traditional brews and have added a few new ones.

Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#204

Post by spookthesunset »

yamazakiwi wrote: post #163
sfpotter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little surprised Anchor didn't do better. I personally got worn out by all the craziness and experimentation in the craft brewing scene. Really unique IPAs or sour beers were fun for a while, but after a while, I realized I just wanted something reasonably good and predictably normal, i.e. a Normal Good Beer. It seemed like Anchor was delivering on this, but maybe there were enough other options that they just…

I don't have the numbers... but I'm going to assume that regular beer drinkers drink the popular light beers or already have a craft beer they like and spend less money trying new products. It took contentious political media to get die-hards to stop drinking their favorite light beer. That's how ingrained these brands are. It's harder to sell a new Amber Ale than a Juicy Mango/Dragonfruit IPA. These 2 beers serve di…

Those light beers are also low ABV, which is ideal for warm summer days where to just want something refreshing without getting plastered. A simple tasting 4% beer works great for that. A complex, bitter 12% double IPA? Not so much.

I’d much rather drink an amber ale on a nice warm day than yet another IPA.

Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#205

Post by giantg2 »

jms703 wrote: post #200
bartread wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is an important point but, with that said, I'd suggest that perhaps the reason Anchor were struggling is they didn't really innovate. Rather they rested on the laurels of that 127 year heritage. Certainly a very personal opinion but the first time I tried Anchor beers sometime in the noughties I was underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong: they're certainly better than Bud, Coors, etc., but as a Brit coming fro…

Why does a beer have to innovate?

Not the beer, but the company. Even places like Guiness come out with new stuff like Baltimore Blonde to increase their line up and appeal to a bigger market for better scale.

Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#206

Post by spookthesunset »

stickfigure wrote: post #201
Rapzid wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their Porter is fantastic and on par with Fuller's.

I love porters but they're getting hard to find. Every supermarket is wall-to-wall IPAs. I assume they know what sells, so apparently that's what the market wants right now. You can't make a living brewing porters. I would be a lot more disappointed with this turn of events if I had access to their porter. But the ubiquitous steam beer was never one of my favorites.

Totally agree. The craft beer industry needs to stop with all this IPA nonsense. It’s absurd how hard it is to find anything but yet another weird IPA.

If the craft beer industry is shrinking, this is one large component. Stop with the nonstop IPA’s. There is way more beers than just IPA’s.

Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#207

Post by jeffbee »

deadballcretin wrote: post #190

Simply put, par for the course when it comes to what little of San Francisco's soul is actually left. Slowly dismantling the weird to make way for the boring. Saporro has mismanaged this from the very start, they had no plan when they bought the company and will almost certainly turn to victim blaming and crying foul amidst their successful unionization effort in 2019.

The idea that in the absence of Anchor we will be at a loss for "soul" breweries is somewhat hilarious. Over my 40+ years of life the number of breweries in America has exploded 100-fold. In San Francisco and the immediate area craft breweries are almost a menace. There must be 5000 of them in California. If you insist that your beer be sourced from your immediate political jurisdiction, you could get beer from Fort Point Beer Co, a large and successful independent with statewide distribution.

Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#208

Post by trafficante »

giantg2 wrote: post #203
ecocentrik wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This news has nothing to do with lack of innovation. The entire beer market is currently contracting. Also, not everything needs to innovate. Every field needs a canon of notable creations that have stood the test of centuries or millennia and beer brewing is no exception.

I don't know. It seems a mix of traditional and innovation does well. Yuengling seems to be a good example of a small brand becoming regional and now almost national. They have their traditional brews and have added a few new ones.

Grew up in PA and love seeing Yingers blow up, but I bet their success is largely due to the same reason we loved them back in the early 2000s: they brew a tasty no-frills lager at a good price.

Seems a lot of the brewing industry chased fads for 20 years.

Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#209

Post by dmoy »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #159
joshuaheard wrote: post #150

I loved this beer when I was in my twenties. My college-age daughter and her friends, however, don't even drink beer. They drink this fruit-flavored hard seltzers.

Really surprising to me how long it took for the seltzers and cocktail in a can stuff to take off. Especially among college age people my informal survey has around 70% of people preferring their flavor yet until like 5 years ago the only fruity beverage widely available was mikes hard lemonade. And not only do most young people prefer the taste, seltzers are much cheaper to make than beer and require much less exper…

IIRC it had a lot to do with figuring out a manufacturing process that involved brewing to be taxed as a malt beverage, instead of a hard liquor.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/how-tax-policy-gave-...

Re: SF's Anchor Brewing Company shutting down after 127 years

#210

Post by ______ »

xkgwkdmgjtx wrote: post #143

I hesitate to post this hearsay accusation, but it hasn't been mentioned in this thread and it might be important to discuss. I talked to Anchor employees after the news about stopping the Christmas Ale and stopping sales outside of California. They told me the writing was on the wall that Anchor would be closed down and sold for scraps. They were adamant that the root issue here is Sapporo mismanagement, not anythin…

I met a former Anchor brewer who left and moved to at a brewery in Flagstaff AZ two years ago, they seemed pretty unhappy back at Anchor.
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