Flagship February daily feature - Anchor Steam Beer

Anchor Brewing's special place in American brewing history is well-documented. If you're not familiar, I strongly suggest checking it out over here. In my frequent trips to the Bay Area over the last twenty years, I've drank plenty of Anchor around town, at the SFO airport, and been to the landmark brewery twice. Somehow, in all my grand organization of pictures on my numerous hard drives, I'm not able to dig up the interior brewery tour pictures I have from the past. Just the more recent exterior ones I've included in my PDF below.

Around ten years ago, an unfortunate cross-country flight delayed by more than three hours, had me missing my invitation to the brewery's annual holiday party. But after this feature, I'm pledging to take them up on their offer for a re-visit (finally!) during my next trip to the city.

The last time I was there, the legendary former owner Fritz Maytag was on-site and joined our tour group in the tasting room for the end-of-tour samples. Maytag also attended his brewery's event at The Four Seasons in 2008 during the inaugural Philly Beer Week, making that event all the more special. From another personal angle, it was rewarding to speak with Maytag's friend and brewery ambassador, Andy Musser (rip), at events. It was always a fun conversation alternating between baseball (Musser was a Phillies announcer, too, if you weren't aware) and beer. Had such a conversation in the galley of a cross-country flight that he and I were both on maybe fifteen years ago. But, I digress....

The new era of Anchor sees longtime familiar faces like Maytag, Mark Carpenter (brewmaster since 1971), and others retired/moved on. The newest owners, Japan-based Sapporo, acquired Anchor in 2017, but the beer persists. I miss the Brekle's Brown, Bock, and interesting beers from the Zymaster Series, But, in addition to Steam, I still find myself eagerly seeking out the Liberty Ale, Old Foghorn, Porter, and the annual changing recipe that is the iconic Christmas Ale.

Now click the picture below for a full feature on Anchor Steam.

If you're just jumping in during the middle of this and want to know what this is all about, link back here to see the Flagship February overview as well as an ongoing list of all beers I'm featuring during the month of February.

Disclosure: For this project, I solely created the list of 28 beers featured here on The Brew Lounge. I was in contact with each brewery and neither required nor requested complimentary samples. I purchased today's Anchor beer at retail, but was also provided with the "stovepipe" can sent from the brewery as part of a media mailing.

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© Bryan J. Kolesar and The Brew Lounge, 2018. All content is owned and uniquely created by Bryan J. Kolesar. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from Kolesar is strictly prohibited. Excerpts, images, and links may be used with advance permission granted and only provided that full and clear credit is given to Bryan J. Kolesar and The Brew Lounge with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Contact Kolesar at TheBrewLounge@gmail.com

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PBW 2009: Fritz Maytag brings Anchor to The Four Seasons

I may still have reservations about not attending The Four Seasons beer dinner with Fritz Maytag during Philly Beer Week. Fortunately, though, I'd stopped in for a bit of the meet and greet prior to the dinner. Certainly one of the highlights of my Philly Beer Week 2009.

Since Bruce Nichols attended, I asked if he might like to share his reaction to the dinner. Keep in mind that he is one of the Philly Beer Week "committee members." But, I'm guessing that if he really wasn't all that thrilled with the dinner, he would have politely turned down my offer to write a few words for The Brew Lounge.

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From Bruce Nichols: The Four Seasons Hotel can spot a star; they booked Fritz Maytag for a Philly Beer Week dinner early on and watched the reservations roll in. Then the waiting list swelled; then they opened an adjacent dining room. Lots of people wanted to spend an evening with the father of the craft brewing movement.

Fritz has been a supporter of craft beer in Philadelphia for decades; at a 1992 Michael Jackson event at the Penn Museum, he launched Ninkasi, his recreation of the ancient beer spoken of in a hymn to Ninkasi, Sumerian goddess of beer. Most recently, he spoke at the memorial celebration for Michael Jackson at the Museum during Philly Beer Week 2008.

This year, Fritz was enjoying himself. Before each course, he got up and said a few words about the Anchor beer being served. But at the table, he could not stop talking about the food. The chef had created a special five course beer dinner menu and Fritz was awestruck. He has probably soldiered through some less than sterling beer dinners, but this one hit his quality zone head on. He was a happy man.

What else was on his mind? He waded right in to current controversy over the significance of style labels in beer. "What makes a beer a bock?" came a question. His answer: "Because it says so on the label," came his response; a recognizably Fritzian distillation that dismisses dimwits and pundits alike. He seemed to take a position very similar to that of Randy Mosher, another Philly Beer Week visitor, who views style labels at best as "markers" rather than exact guidelines or descriptors of the beer itself. But that is another topic.

Andy Musser is Fritz’s local rep, and he brought us around to talking about Philly Beer Week 2010. How could Fritz help? I put the question to him directly: what would you like to do during Philly Beer Week next year?

Anything you want me to, he said—which I took as a sign that he knew something very special is happening around beer in Philadelphia, something he wants to continue to be part of. Fritz inspires, just by being himself. Come out and meet him yourself next year.