Arrowhead Pride Beer of the Week: Anchor Brewing Company Anchor Steam

Welcome to another edition of the Beer of the Week!

As always, the Beer of the Week is originally presented on the Arrowhead Pride Tailgate on 610 Sports Radio as part of my Defense and Beer of the Week segment.

This week, with the Kansas City Chiefs playing the San Francisco 49ers, I picked an old San Francisco classic for this week. This week’s Beer of the Week is none other than Anchor Brewing Company Anchor Steam!

A 4.9% California Common Ale, Anchor Steam is an amber colored beer with toasted bready malts, a slight hop bitterness, and earthy flavors that have been brewed since Anchor Brewing Company opened in 1896. A lightly carbonated beer, it’s made with lager yeast but fermented at ale temperatures, giving the beer a distinct characteristics from the esters produced by the strained yeast.

The name “steam” likely originated from the practice of placing warm, fermenting beers in the late 1800s on San Francisco rooftops, where fog would collect on the warm pans of open wort. Anchor Steam is still fermented in open air vessels, keeping some of the trends that made the beer famous for over a century.

Anchor Brewing Company is America’s first and oldest craft brewery, dating all the way back to the California Gold Rush. A German brewer arrived in California in 1849, started a saloon and brewery, and started brewing beer in the Port of San Francisco. 25 years later, Anchor’s two founders bought the saloon, started a brewery, and were able to make it through prohibition, massive earthquakes, fires, and multiple other circumstances that would’ve shut down any business in those days. They persevered and find themselves with the success that they have today, making a year-round collection of seven delicious staple beers.

So if you can, make sure to swing by your local liquor store and scoop up some Anchor Brewing Company Anchor Steam this weekend!

Check back here this time next week for the new Beer of the Week!