More on Anchor's sea change

Jay Brooks —of Brookston Beer Bulletin— has interviewed Keith Greggor, 1/2 half of the team that purchased iconic Anchor Brewery earlier this week. An ex-pat Englishman, Greggor has an interesting, and shall we say, reassuring background. Here is what he intends for Anchor, at least in the immediate future.

The current employees will all remain and nothing much should change around the brewery at all. John Dannerbeck, current president, will continue in that role, reporting to Greggor after the close. Foglio will then become chairman, and Maytag will remain involved as chairman emeritus. The only changes will likely be in marketing. Additional sales people will be hired and will represent the Anchor, BrewDog and Cooper’s brands. Greggor sees lots of opportunities to grow the brand, and that’s really he and Foglio’s specialty.

Oh, and for the record, the brewery's flagship brand is Anchor Steam; the brewery's name is Anchor Brewery (no 'steam').

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• The rest of Jay's piece: here.
• More on the sale: here.
• Thank you to Stephen Beaumont, whose post at Blogging at World of Beer alerted me to this update.

Seismic shift: ANCHOR BREWING SOLD

I awoke this morning to startling news.

Anchor Brewing Company —the brewery that begat the good beer renaissance in the United States—  has been sold. Here's the story as it broke Monday evening, 26 April, at the Brookston Beer Bulletin:

The Griffin Group, an investment and consulting company focused on beverage alcohol brands, announced its acquisition of Anchor Brewing Company which includes its portfolio of craft beers and artisan spirits, including the award winning Anchor Steam Beer.

The Griffin Group is led by beverage alcohol veterans, Keith Greggor and Tony Foglio, two longtime San Francisco residents who have been working with Anchor Brewing Company’s owner, Fritz Maytag to maintain the iconic brewery and distillery in San Francisco.

"Anchor Brewing Company has a long history in San Francisco and The Griffin Group is ushering in an exciting era while maintaining our proud, time-honored history,” said Fritz Maytag. “Combining Keith and Tony’s passion for the Anchor Brewing Company, their industry experience and expertise only means that Anchor will be enjoyed in San Francisco for generations to come."

"Since 1896, Anchor Brewing Company has been an icon of San Francisco’s history and culture,” stated Griffin’s Founding Partner, Keith Greggor, "I am honored to bring Anchor Brewing Company into our family of craft beers and artisanal spirits through establishing Anchor Brewers & Distillers, LLC."

Anchor Brewery Sold
Jay Brooks
Brookston beer Bulletin
26 April 2010

According to Brooks, Gregor and his business partner achieved their success creating Sky Vodka. They own the US distribution rights to Brew Dog, a small brewery in Scotland, the current rave fave of many in the craft beer world.

The Anchor Brewing Company was founded in San Francisco in 1895 as the Viking Brewing Company. The name was changed to Anchor in 1907.

The brewery was close to folding when graduate student Fritz Maytag —of the Maytag washing machine empire— purchased it in 1965. Its facilities were decrepid, its sales near moribund. The conversion to success took several years of struggle.

There have been many, many, other adventuresome breweries since 1965. But for a good 20 years after Maytag purchased Anchor,  there were few so-called micros at all. Anchor Brewing, and Mr. Maytag,  spawned the good beer revolution.

Now, after 45 years, THE icon of good beer in the United States has been sold. Anchor is not a public museum. It is a for-profit business. Anchor Steam, among several fine beers in the brewery's roster, remains —at present— a damn tasty beverage.

UPDATE:
In August 2017, the Japanese conglomerate, Sapporo, purchased Anchor. More: here.

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• The Anchor timeline above was taken from American Breweries II (Dale Van Wieren, 1995). The San Francisco Chronicle mentions a 40 year earlier timeline (here), even though it contradicts itself (here), seeming to side with Wieren. The brewery itself cites the year 1896, at its homepage.
• UPDATE:  Jay Brooks interviews one of the new owners: here.

Clamps & Gaskets: Roundup for Week 16

Week 16
18 April 2010 - 24 April 2010

• 2010.04.24
  Freshness matters for beer ... and for gin: http://bit.ly/cuHwin
• 2010.04.23
  Red wine may protect the brain against stroke damage. http://retwt.me/1MWao

• 2010.04.23
  Today in 1516: Bavaria Cracks Down on Brewers. Historian Maureen Ogle interviewed on the Reinheitsgebot, the Bavarian Purity Law. http://bit.ly/c8Hdaj
• 2010.04.22
  Fermenting, aging, and blending gueuze-lambic beer in oak barrels —in a garage— at home: http://bit.ly/aHcvlu

• 2010.04.22
  Beer writer Lew Bryson says Casey Hard —cellarman/GM at Maxs Taphouse of Baltimore, MD— is insane, in a good way. Why? He's just increased his draft beer lines to 102. http://bit.ly/97HrS6
• 2010.04.22
  The Pennsylvania Beer Debate: Should Six-Packs Be Sold At Grocery Stores? VIDEO: Beer writer says yes vs. the distributors. http://bit.ly/dCCvqM
• 2010.04.22
  Facebook expands its reach into numerous third-party sites, such as The Washington Post. http://bit.ly/dxGVHq
• 2010.04.21
  When you're confused: Category 23. Beer's catch-all category style, as designated by the Brewers Association. http://bit.ly/91fnjK
• 2010.04.21
  Have the wines of Spanish Rioja been unjustly overlooked? http://bit.ly/cfQqJV
• 2010.04.18
  Potential economic impact of the Icelandic volcano eruption: http://bit.ly/c0fnYP

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• Clamps and Gaskets is a weekly wrap-up of stories  not posted at Yours For Good Fermentables.com. Most deal with beer (or wine, or whisky); some do not. But all are brief, and many are re-posts from my Twitter account: twitter.com/cizauskas.
• The Clamps and Gaskets graphic was created by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.

Writer Gene Lees tells his last tale

Jazz is greatest when it tells a story. On Thursday, the world of jazz lost one of its story tellers, Gene Lees. Mr. Lees didn't play jazz, but he wrote about it. Here's a portion of an appreciation from the Washington Post:

He wrote biographies of bandleader Woody Herman, Mercer and the composing team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and was the co-author of Henry Mancini's autobiography. At the time of his death, Mr. Lees had almost completed a biography of Shaw.

Lees wrote about jazz as it was in the world in which it found itself (and does to some extent today):

Mr. Lees also wrote a biography of pianist Oscar Peterson, a fellow Canadian. After making headlines in the 1950s with an article detailing how a white barber refused to cut Peterson's hair, Mr. Lees often wrote about matters of race, sometimes in unexpected and challenging ways. His 2001 book, "You Can't Steal a Gift," assessed the racial burden faced by black musicians Nat "King" Cole, Gillespie, Milt Hinton and Clark Terry.

"These guys all had reason to be bitter and were not," Mr. Lees wrote. "That is a triumph of the human spirit."

Lees wrote lyrics to jazz melodies, as well, some of which have become standards. Here's Matt Shreudle of the Washington Post:

Lees wrote some memorable lyrics of his own, most notably with Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim. Here are the haunting opening lines [to  Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars, or Corcavado]:

Quiet nights of quiet stars,
Quiet chords from my guitar,
Floating on the silence
That surrounds us.

Lees wrote the lyrics to one of my favorite jazz melodies, pianist Bill Evans' wistful Waltz For Debby. I was fortunate to hear Mr. Evans in person at the Village Vanguard a few months before his death in 1980.

Someday all too soon
She'll grow up and she'll leave her dolls
and her prince and that silly old bear.
When she goes they will cry
As she whispers, "Good-bye."
They will miss her, I fear,
But then so will I.

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Gene Lees' books currently available at Amazon: here.

Birthday in Beer: Bob Skilnik

Today's Birthday in Beer belongs to Bob Skilnik, the author of Beer & Food: An American History. He's written a well-researched story of beer in America from Colonial days to the present, in which he places beer in context, connecting it with the nation's food and cuisine. The book is one part history, one part beer-as-ingredient cookbook, and one part beer myth exposé.

Bob is definitely a beer curmudgeon; he delights in deflating beer myths. For example, from his blog, Beer (and more) in Food, you'll learn:

• what Ben Franklin did NOT say about beer
• the true history of Pilgrims and beer and the first Thanksgiving
• how beer came to be available on the very day the manufacturing of 3.2% alcohol-by-weight beer became legal in 1933. 

The beer now available had been brewed under the old Prohibition formula for near beer. <...> This would explain how the brewers had hundreds of thousands of cases of beer ready for sale in such a short period of time. After all, old-time local brewers had been stating for decades that their beer required two months for lagering purposes. Despite the loud protests of local brewers, Chicagoans were getting a weakened version of the kind of beer they had drunk before Prohibition. City brewers continued to insist that their beer was up to government standards but week-end arrests for drunkenness indicated otherwise. Police records showed only 63 persons were charged with drunkenness on Saturday night in Chicago. This was about one-third of the normal arrest figures during a typical Prohibition-era week-end.

Bob is a young 72 today. His blog is subtitled  Beer: The Condiment With An Attitude!. That's appropriate.

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• Bob is the author of Does My Butt look Big in This Beer, which lists nutritional analyses for 2,000 beers.
• More of my short list of Birthdays in Beer: here.
• Follow the Brookston Beer Bulletin's much more comprehensive calendar of beer birthdays. It's a marvelous resource for learning more about the folk who brew, deliver, and write and talk about beer.