Lot of Schlitz back in the late 60s and early 70s.
Back then, their slogan was “When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.”
We used to get it in Columbia, MO at Mizzou back ‘69-’73. We preferred the local swill, Bud and Busch, and Coors when somebody had made a run from Golden, CO to Missouri. Now and then we had Miller High Life, MGD, Hamms and PBR. They were all “meh”.
Then, after graduating in June 1973, I moved to San Francisco, discovered microbrew Anchor Brewing and their Anchor Steam Beer, and I thought “WOW! So this is what beer is supposed to taste like!” It was microbrews for me from then on.
That brewery had a fascinating history. It was founded in 1896 so drinking it was like being part of the San Francisco’s Gilded Age. The company had fallen on hard times with the ascent of the big industrial brewers. It was barely hanging on by 1960. Fritz Maytag, a descendant of the Maytag Corporation, bought Anchor in 1965 when it was on the verge of bankruptcy and helped usher in the craft beer industry in the United States. He modernized production, moved to a new facility on Potrero Hill, and turned Anchor Steam into an iconic American craft beer. During the 1980s, demand grew nationally, and Anchor became a genuine inspiration for the entire craft brewing movement.
Alas, Anchor went through some changes of ownership that killed it. In 2010, Maytag sold the company to former Skyy vodka executives Keith Greggor and Tony Foglio, from Novato, California, who planned to expand Anchor’s business while keeping its commitment to artisan brewing. In 2017, it was sold Sapporo Breweries for $85 million. Sales declined every year except in 2021. Attempts to rebrand failed. Employees left the close-knit workforce. Workers, represented by their union, attempted to buy the brewery and reopen it as a worker-owned cooperative. That failed
Ten months after the closure announcement, Hamdi Ulukaya — the billionaire founder of Chobani yogurt — acquired Anchor and all of its assets, including the brewery, real estate, and intellectual property such as the steam beer recipes, with plans to reopen it.
Then it shut down in 2023.
In the summer of 2025, the new owner revealed that the company would not reopen the original brewery and would not reestablish a taproom in San Francisco, instead planning to brew Anchor somewhere outside the city using a contract brewer.
It was a sad end to what was genuinely a landmark institution — the brewery that essentially invented American craft beer.