Anchor Aweigh! (July 28th - 30th)

It's like the Titanic leaving Liverpool....one last voyage..

 

Timely.

 

That's what it said but bottles are most likely.

 

Tell me that's not a single can/bottle price.

 

Well, the best beer bar around had steam on tap so I had to join in.

Such a unique and pleasant beer. It's got aspects of the hoppy ambers that were waning in popularity when I was entering the broader beer world 15ish years ago. I also see its influence in the modern American pale ale. It's not unlike some of the early, coarse, efforts at lagers I recall from some American brewers.

Ultimately, it's a fairly singular brew. It's Anchor Steam. I probably didn't drink it as often as I should have. Hope to see it again someday.

To quote the style description the beer bar went with, "goodnight sweet prince"

 

Sigh. Yes it is. An expensive goodbye.

 

Anchor Porter has never had a big presence in my area, so I was really pleased to find two bottles in the singles section of my local grocer. I’ve never seen packs there. Where they came from, who knows.

Such a delightful porter!

Cheers

 

Whew... I thought Sapporo musta sold off the new date coding printer and was saving money during those final days of bottling by using that old mechanism and also found a few sleeves of old labels.

Thought I'd have to break-out my old date code cheat sheet from that era.

 

Fortuitous email with an Anchor tasting over the border. Sadly the Christmas keg will not be tapped, but grateful this beer is here.

Was sad my regular place in February last in Vegas (El Cortez) pulled the Anchor tap.

Anchor Steam



Really nice. May pick up a six pack of both Steam and Porter, will look at the dates first.

Go Navy, Beat Sapporo!

 

I'm a drink'n a bottle of Old Foghorn now, PKG 02102023 I bought (2) 6 packs. could have bought more. It's tasting good. Mucky/murky body with plenty of carbonation. Head leaves plenty of fine lacing. I will have to do a review after a few more bottles sometime this weekend 10.2% ABV Price was under $10 per 6 pack including tax. Plus it was in a cold fridge.

 

I applaud your commitment but gawd dayum! That's just shy of what a 6 pack of bottles cost out here

 

*used to cost

 

I’ve been looking for Liberty Ale for years. Their porter probably was the first of that style I ever tried. The flagship is and was always solid. I hope someone buys the intellectual property and one day brews them again. Cheers.

 

Yike.

 

A single yike for a single can

 

I'm enjoying an Anchor Steam for what might possibly be the last time, paired with a Giants game. Now that I am thinking about it, at my first Giants game I enjoyed a few Steams--sold in their plastic ballpark-friendly bottles at the time.

I've had Steam many, many times over the years, to the point where I took it for granted because it was always there. Their tour was always a real treat, too, and an experience I had the opportunity to revisit a handful of times.

I've made my displeasure at the rebranding clear on this site. It just doesn't feel right drinking my final Anchor from a can and not a bottle with their iconic label! This can comes courtesy of a neighbor of mine who had the foresight to stock up before the shelves were cleared. I appreciate the share!

I'll open my '23 OSA tomorrow or Sunday and wax poetic some more. Thanks for all the memories, Fritz and company!

 

In some cases, Anchor products have been coming in to stores here way more than usual... and selling way more than usual. Still easy enough to find though. I've been drinking some Steam, Porter, OSA and Liberty... but I figured I'd feature something different for this thread. For completeness sake, I'll briefly talk about them though. The Steam and Porter were April bottlings. I haven't been a fan of Steam (the unpasteurized and unfiltered sample I had at the brewery was eye-opening and great though)... I like their Porter... I definitely don't care for OSA... and all of the recent bottles of these beers kept those feelings intact. I used to love Liberty but found myself reversing that position in the past. The recent can I had was very old, so nothing there was going to win me over again. I was tempted to buy a single of their lo-cal peach hazy IPA after making a comment about it in one of the recent "news" threads (I figured I owed it a try after the post), but the cans of it were too old for me to want to go through with it. For this thread, I thought I'd focus on bottles that date back to the Griffin Group days. These are post-Maytag, pre-Sapporo.



This Brekle's Brown is from May 2012, so it's over a decade old. ( @jesskidden - I am definitely glad you have your date code clipping, because the old Anchor web FAQ that still had the code well after it was outdated seems to have vanished.) It's been ages since I've had an Anchor bomber in my hand... and I gotta say it's an awesome package. Absolutely lovely label shape, art design, and bottle. It really makes contemporary craft visuals look significantly worse by comparison. For me, the "magnum" OSA bottles didn't feel Anchor-y enough to give a similar feeling. 6% ABV (although it's not on the package as far as I saw). When was the last time you saw "all malt" stated on a beer label?(!) It also states "single hop." If you were wondering what the hop was, I was too. Answer: Citra! If this beer came out today, it would state "Citra hop brown ale" instead of “single hop”… and people on BA would either complain about it not being traditional, or about it being a weird choice for a brown ale.

Brekle’s Brown is a reference to Gottlieb Brekle - a German immigrant who came to San Francisco due to the gold rush and started brewing steam beer. He arrived in the US in 1852. He sold his brewery in 1896... and the name of it was changed to Anchor after that. This was not only before prohibition, it was also before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires.

My hopes for this beer were pretty low. Popped the cap and a wave of oxidation aroma hit me. It presented a really lovely head under the circumstances though.

The beer is very dark brown with red highlights and without clarity issues. Smells of fruit cake with raisins.

The taste was very surprising though. Oxidation is certainly there, but at a level where it starts to lessen quite a bit with acclimation - much like smoke with a Rauchbier. Once you get past the opening impression, the beer gets more and more enjoyable (provided you don't switch gears while drinking). I was hoping I could tolerate the beer, but I ended up actually enjoying it. I must say that I am enjoying this more than a good portion of the fresher Anchor products mentioned above. The heaviness of the aroma was not a signal of the taste to come - the taste having much more balance.

There’s a decent amount of roast character, acidity, and a bit of balancing bitterness. It’s fruity in a plum way. Importantly, the body is light. The result of all these elements working together is much better drinkability than one would expect from its age or aroma.

The beer feels like it’s from a different era in craft beer, and I don’t mean that in terms of the age of the beer, I mean that from the perspective of recipe formulation. This beer was a treat.

Cheers everybody.