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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

Sam Adams and and Trillium would both probably cause a bigger uproar than this Anchor Brewing company, which honestly I have never heard of not being in California.

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Some of the younger readers might not realize that Anchor was at the forefront of the American craft brewing renaissance. Back then Canadians would laugh at USA beer as all tasting like water. Only Europe had craft brew. Fast forward to now and the market is saturated. There are more craft breweries per capita in the USA than in Germany. We’re beyond peak craft brew.

> We’re beyond peak craft brew.

Peak craft beer implies that the trend is now on a downward trajectory. I don't know if that is the case, craft beer feels really ingrained in the culture at this point.

1. Is there a decrease in craft breweries being started, or total gallons of craft beer being produced?

2. Is there a decrease in beer brewing hobby supplies?

To #1, at least according to the Brewers Association figures (https://www.brewersassociation.org/statistics-and-data/natio...), craft beer sales have been fairly stagnant since about 2015. That has been kind of a problem for an industry that was seeing investment at a rate that would seem to presume that this rocketshp was headed to the moon. And, maybe most pertinent to the situation for Anchor, regional and microbrewery beer sales have been in decline. The only segment of the craft beer industry that's growing is taprooms.

To #2, yes, at least in my area there are about half as many homebrew supply shops as there were ten years ago.

As to #2, how much of that is due to online sales? The last homebrew store in my town closed down last year, but there are is much wider selection of both equipment and ingredients available to me now than at any other time.

We're beyond the peak from a critical view. Most innovation from brewers today is coming in terms of marketing or making numbers go up (loading up on ABV or IBUs), while seemingly treating flavor as secondary.

I'm definitely not saying no one is making good new beer anymore, just that the improvements from the ~80s-00s has slowed down.

I didn't think Germany had much craft beer given the purity law.

Treehouse is almost definitely in that conversation as well. Hill Farmstead as well.

The uproar is probably more among folks who follow the industry though. Most people have seen Anchor at a grocery store at some point. They were, I'm pretty sure, a natural niche craft brewery before those things were normal. In the same zone as places like Sam Adams or New Belgium or Sierra Nevada. You didn't have to really be "into beer" to know what they were and maybe enjoy buying a Christmas Ale from them every year as a seasonal thing.

To OP's point, there's less places like that now, but that's because I have 3 local breweries I'd be sad about if they closed, instead of 1-2 national breweries. I'd be sad if Trillium or Alchemist closed, but it's not as if I could buy them without traveling to the area, so it's more of a "aww, that's a bummer" and less of a change to my life.

I'm not sure either is better/worse though. We've just moved beyond the sort of craft beer monoculture. We don't just have 2-3 Christmas Ales we all drink, in the same way we don't all watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or all talk about the new episode of ER every week.

> "Anchor Brewing company, which honestly I have never heard of not being in California."

Weird, it's quite well-known even internationally. I certainly see it regularly in London, at the kind of places which sell imported American beers.

I’m from the same area as you so geography isn’t the issue.

They’re pretty notable, arguably they started the craft beer movement

Agree with you on those two. Not really the same vein but I'd throw Narragansett in as well

Anchor Brewing was among the first good American craft beer I could consistently find in pubs and bars across Europe. It was also the beer that really made me aware that there was more to American beer than Coors and Bud light.

Growing up outside of California I knew their name from a line in this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y0R-QccpcQ

Not being in California is not a reason you wouldn't know it.

If you ever looked up the history of beer in the US or US beer styles you would know it. All the people in the craft beer industry certainly do. Maybe the craft beer drinkers in parts of the country don't know it but Steam/California Common is one of the few original US beer styles. And Anchor was one of the first in the modern craft beer revolution.

I always chuckle at the idea of calling Sam Adams "craft" beer, but I guess they do check all the boxes for it.

I read an article in a craft brewing mag (might’ve been “Celebrator” circa 2003) that pointed out how the craft brewers association kept revising upward the number of barrels/year production that still qualified as “craft” so that it continued to accommodate Sam Adams.

All their beers taste like one beer with some kind of flavor packets added to them to get the different varieties. I don't know if that's what they do—surely it's not?—but damn is it ever what it tastes like. I've never encountered another brewery that gives me that vibe.

I've seen Anchor Steam in good beer bars and stores on the Gulf coast, East coast, and great lakes. In Houston I have no trouble (until now, I guess) finding one or two of the magnum size Christmas ales to take to holiday parties and have been doing so for several years.

I have never lived in California.

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