rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (02/12/85)
A comment on the purchase of Lone Star by Olympia led to... > Roughly ten years ago the British experienced a similar brewery war. > Many local breweries were bought up and shut down. The stalwart drinkers > of Britain responded with CAMRA -- The CAMpaign for Real Ale... Actually, the acquisitions in the U.S. in recent years are only the final skirmishes of a battle that was lost fifty years ago. Prohibition did more than you can ever imagine to kill off small breweries. Large brewers stayed in business selling malt products; small ones just closed their doors. When Prohibition was over, the big brewers came back with their uniform light, bland styles and mass marketing. Little breweries just didn't come back; there wasn't anything left. Only in the last five years has there been a resurgence of local breweries and regional styles. The unquestioned leader in the recent resurgence is Anchor Brewery in California, almost a fairy-tale success story. There are very few brewers producing over 100,000 barrels a year who have any interesting products (i.e., anything other than a collection of passable pale lagers) and very few producing under that amount who don't have anything distinctive. -- Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 ...Cerebus for dictator!
ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould) (02/27/85)
> Only in the last five years > has there been a resurgence of local breweries and regional styles. The > unquestioned leader in the recent resurgence is Anchor Brewery in > California, almost a fairy-tale success story. > -- > Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 > ...Cerebus for dictator! Anchor (in San Francisco) does indeed make a fine beer. (They make a few, actually - their "Liberty Ale" is perhaps my all-time favorite brew. They also brew a "Christmas Ale" every year. Recently, it's been a wonderfully-balanced brown ale; a few years ago it was more like Liberty.) Rather than a fairy-tale success, however, Anchor is more of an underscore of Dick's comments about small breweries folding during prohibition and not restarting. Also, it's been around for considerably more than five years. Anchor is the project of Fritz Maytag, of the Maytag appliance family. He had the money to start a quality brewery that could afford to sell to a small market. Anchor's prices have always been competitive with quality European imports, which is to say notably higher than run-of-the-mill American beers. (BTW, the best blue cheese I've tasted recently is Maytag's doing, also.) -- Ed Gould mt Xinu, 739 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94710 USA {ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed +1 415 644 0146