RIP Anchor Brewing

After delving deep into the craft beer side and going through a phase with each variant, I too have come back around to just wanting to drink beers that taste like beer. Give me a basic lager or Pilsner and I’ll be super happy.

 

Obituaries flowing in (unpaywalled).
As Anchor Brewing closes down, is its steam beer still good?

 

I crossed the Guinness bridge a long time ago, and glad of it.
Once I went to stouts, everything else pales. And not just literally.

 

Exactly. Beer-flavoured beer, please.

 

Our breweries have done a nice job of diversifying their offerings, as people have made it clear they don't just want IPAs. Triple Crossing in Richmond makes a fine lager, a really good German pils plus a lot of lower alcohol offerings. I still enjoy IPAs but I'm at the point where I have one or two and that's enough for me. My go-to one in Virginia is Get Bent from Parkway Brewing in Salem. Really balanced, not too hoppy, not too malty. Kind of an old-school IPA in a world where everything is trying to out-hazy everything else.

 

Fuck!

I once covered my beer night on the softball team with about four cases’ worth of all the Steam varieties.

FUCK

 

Makes the DB move seem even smarter. They told me how it positioned them better - not just for marketing, shelf space, wider distribution, etc, but it also gave them buying power to get choice ingredients.

It wasn’t just a sellout.

 

True, but Jason Oliver definitely got butthurt about all of the sellout talk. I remember seeing him at one of the craft fests wearing a hat that read "Still a craft brewery" and there was talk of quieting haters, things of that nature. The original owners of DB never expected it to get so big and were basically overwhelmed so they decided to sell. I understood. DB was never my favorite Virginia brewery anyway, but they have their strong points. The facility/campus in Roseland is great.

 

The macro spending spree hasn't been all good. AB-InBev is selling or closing some of the micros it bought. Coors and Miller tried fooling people into buying beers that seemed micro.

Also, for people who like beer flavored beer, some micros are brewing Mexican lagers. Jack's Abby makes some great drinkable lagers.

 

Still one of the best local T-Shirts.

Nelson County, VA
More Breweries Than Stoplights

 

The craze that has me pushing back on crafts is sours. Whenever I go shopping for beer (which lately hasn’t been often. I just find myself not wanting to drink unless there’s an occasion) I get my hopes up when I see new offerings from different crafts. But they’re all sours. I end up going back to Anchor because they have a simple, tasty beer. I don’t want a triple bitter, triple the alcohol IPA.

Don’t get me wrong, a good IPA is still good, but I want something simpler to enjoy two of.

Heard a radio interview where craft brewers show off to each other with lagers. Those are usually more time consuming so they tend to be what brewers judge skill.

 

Interesting. In a previous, child-less life friends and I would go to the Great American Beer Fest in Denver every other year or so. You'd get toward the end of the last night and all the regular stuff would be running low, but every brewery still had "Blueberry Peach Pie Cobbler Sour," or whatever random ass combination of ingredients the maker seemed to come across, and I'd curse those as brewers trying to show off to one another. (This was slightly before sours started showing up so heavily in stores.)