Anchor Brewing Company

Anchor Brewing is proud to be America's first and oldest craft brewery. Their tradition goes back to the glorious times of the gold rush and brewing is still done in the copper kettles of that time. Anchor Brewing is the perfect symbiosis of classic brewing art and state-of-the-art technology.

And they're still looking for excellent beers like Steam Beer!

In good and in bad times

Lured by the irresistible glitter of the gold rush, German brewer Gottlieb Brekle came to San Francisco with his family in 1849. For 3,500 American dollars he bought a saloon where you could play a game of billiards with a good beer. Brekle quickly turned it into his own brewery and thus laid the foundation for the Anchor Brewery. Brekle's successors Ernst Baruth and Otto Schinkel Jr. gave the brewery the name Anchor Brewery. No one knows why they chose this name, but rumor has it that it was a tribute to San Francisco's thriving port. However, the years 1906 and 1907 were not to be good years for the brewery: after Ernst's sudden death surprised everyone, two months later a destructive fire raged, followed by a terrible earthquake. Shortly after the brewery reopened at its new location, Otto was hit by a car. Luckily, two German brewers, Joseph Kraus and August Meyer, managed to keep Anchor alive.

During the Great Prohibition era, production stopped completely and there was no sale by the brewery, whether legal or illegal. If these times weren't bad enough, shortly after Prohibition was lifted, the reopened brewery burned down again.

Stand-up man

But 100 years after future owner Fritz Maytag took over the brewery, Anchor beer began to be bottled and their beer revolution in San Francisco began. Beers like Liberty Ale quickly became a crowd-pleaser and made the brewery known and popular far beyond the city limits of Fog City.

Today, Anchor Brewery is one of the most traditional breweries in America and is celebrated as a pioneer of the craft beer movement across the States and the world.

Avant-garde or not, we love Anchor Brewery's honest, down-to-earth beers!