In case your internet service has been out all week, big beer news hit the wires this week. Anchor Brewing, based in San Francisco, announced they were closing their doors. From some of the reports, they have actively looking for a buyer for over a year. Which is interesting since they were purchased by Sapporo relatively recently in 2017. Anchor very recently had announced some very drastic measures including not distributing outside of California, and not brewing their Christmas Ale this year.
Now I can’t say I drank a lot of Anchor beers. But every year in late November I would purchase a few six packs of the Christmas Ale to get me through the holidays. They changed the recipe slightly every year, as well as what tree was featured on the beer label artwork. It became somewhat of a tradition to start the holidays at Thanksgiving with an Anchor Christmas Ale. This past year it was a real challenge to even find the beer as the distributor was having issues getting it. Looking back now with this current news, probably a bit of a forewarning of things to come.
Funny, I had recently purchased a book on the Anchor brewing story. The title is The Anchor Brewing Story by David Burkhart. Its a great large format book with plenty of photos and illustrations. I have only read a few chapters as of yet, but now I know how it all ends.