One of these rooms was the hops closet, which was a room full of hops. It’s as big as a swimming pool, and there are four of them.Īll along this tour, there are rooms with all sorts of different purposes from storing beer to cooling it down, and they appear to be notched out of the long hallway you walk down. When you see stuff about Anchor Brewing online, these vats are always what you see.įrom there, you proceed to the massive pools of beer where the beer is fermenting, I believe. These things are so awesome and the highlight of the tour as they are both beautiful and historic. Anchor’s new owners make plans to preserve and expand the iconic brand’s operations and cement its position as a leader in craft brewing and artisan distilling.Īs soon as you start the tour, you are greeted with the three big copper vats that process the beer. Despite its primitive equipment and financial condition, Fritz rushed to buy 51% of the historic little San Francisco brewery -for a few thousand dollars-rescuing Anchor from imminent bankruptcy. After 45 years, Fritz Maytag, having inspired thousands of craft brewers, announces his retirement with the sale of Anchor Brewing to Keith Greggor and Tony Foglio. Still, there is no record of Anchor Brewery doing anything-legal or illegal-during this time, other than waiting with the rest of San Francisco for the return of Anchor Steam Beer.Ī young Stanford grad named Fritz Maytag learned that the makers of his favorite beer were soon to close their doors forever. There may have been a few “activities” during Prohibition and the era of bootlegging. Gottlieb Brekle bought an old beer-and-billiards saloon on Pacific Street near Russian Hill for $3,500, transforming it into the brewery that, twenty-five years later, would be renamed, Anchor. Prohibition effectively shut Anchor down in 1920. Read the full history on their site but here is a small synopsis: We met our tour guide Bobby, who was great and headed into the brewery. The taproom had a lot of fun memorabilia on the history of the company and was a very open and welcoming place to relax. We checked in for the tour and waited in the impressive tap room for it to begin. It’s crazy to see how much San Francisco real estate the brewery takes up. When we arrived at the brewery for our 10 AM tour, I was blown away by the size. I wrote this in 2015, so some of the information may have changed.Two tours a day, but plan about two hours for the tour and any samplings you do.Tour is free, but you need reservations, and you need to get them in advance.All that to say, I was finally able to check it out, and it was worth the wait! This brewery has been hard for me to check off as it is in San Francisco and often has a 6-month wait to schedule a tour during popular months. While California has a lot of historic breweries, Anchor Brewing Company has been high on my list for a long time. If you follow my blog, you know I love visiting places with unique California history.
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