Anchors Away: Sapporo Beer Shuts Down Anchor Brewing

This announcement speaks volumes about the current state of the ‘craft’ beer biz and it’s not good.

Anchor Brewing, which almost singlehandedly ushered in the craft beer revolution when Fritz Maytag purchased a controlling interest in a dilapidated San Francisco brewery back in 1965, has ceased operations.

Once a symbol of both the history and vitality the American craft beer biz, Anchor Brewing was wedded to a national distribution model that most up-and-coming craft breweries aspired to at that time. The more states your beers were available in, the better.

But as craft beer fans migrated to smaller uber-local brewers in their own cities, where the offerings were ever-changing and the beer dependably fresh, Anchor’s national distribution model became a curse, as it did for other craft beer pioneers like Stone Brewing.

In 2017 Anchor Brewing which was owned at the time by the Griffin Group, an investment firm group that also held minority interest in BrewDog LLC, was sold to Sapporo, a Japanese beer major hoping to cash in on the American craft beer revolution.

That acquisition, an $85 million dollar deal, further alienated Anchor’s core fans. The brand was no longer considered true craft beer according to the national trade group, the Brewers Association’s definition and its authenticity increasingly questioned by beer purists.

In 2021 Anchor Brewing unleashed a maelstrom of criticism when it announced that it was celebrating its 125-year history with a new look that sacrificed its hand-drawn artisan label artwork in favor a more basic, and frankly, much blander generic look.

And the hits just kept coming…

On June 14, Anchor Brewing announced that it was shedding its national distribution model and limiting its existing sales footprint to its home state of California, an ominous move that foreshadowed the company’s July 12 announcement.

“Production has ceased at the brewery, according to Brewbound “but packaging and distribution of remaining beer on hand will continue through the end of July. Anchor’s Public Taps taproom will temporarily remain open to sell through remaining inventory, including a small batch of 2023 Anchor Christmas Ale that was brewed prior to the decision to cancel the ale’s national release.”

Vin Pair’s Dave Infante, who broke this sad story on Tuesday night, wrote that “rumors have swirled about suitors from Northern California’s craft brewing canon swooping in to rescue Anchor.”

But unfortunately those ‘rescue’ efforts failed and Anchor Brewing is now history, a sad ending for a brewery that dates back nearly 130 years.

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