Rainier had the Brewers Gold flavor but not a huge aroma that Ballantine had. It was yellow in color but had more hop flavor and aroma than just about any other beer at the time. It was an East Coast beer so we didn’t get it that often in San Francisco, but a few bars in the city had it. In high school, you would drink Rainier, which came in a green can and was higher in alcohol than other beers, so you’d wind up with a terrible hangover. The San Francisco Brewers Guild tried to do a duplicate of the old Rainier Ale, but of course we couldn’t call it that, so we called it Green Death. That’s not Rainier! It used to have the amber color of steam beer and it had a very distinctive hop flavor. But when I saw them pouring it, it was yellow. I think if Rainier ale had survived another five or ten years they would be huge. Someone is making it now I went to some beer event recently where they had Rainier so I tried it. Rainier was just so completely different in flavor and color than the other yellow beers around. It was a funny little thing and a typical example of what people were seeking out in the ‘60s. What made it so different was that it was a real part of California history. I thought the place was so great that I should get a job there. After that, I drank steam from time to time and eventually, I decided I wanted to see the brewery, so I did, in 1970 or so. In those days there was a light and a dark version, but the dark was just regular steam beer with caramel coloring in it. I met this girl who was a big deal in my life and I took her to Leroy’s and she said, “What’s that steam beer?” I said, “You know, it’s a little brewery but I’ve never had it.” So we tried some. The first time I drank steam beer-which wasn’t an easy thing to do in those days-it was 1963 and I was at a place in Santa Rosa called Leroy’s Hooch House. that were different at the time, but only a couple. There were a couple of other beers in the U.S. When I started, all we made was Anchor Steam. Here, the brewing legend takes us from the Anchor beer that started it all, to European sours and back again. “American brewers are the most innovative in the world today without question.”Īs the creator of Brekkles Brown and Anchor IPA, it should be no surprise that that many of Carpenter’s career-changing beers are from his own brewery’s portfolio. “There were under 100 breweries when I started and it got to a low point of 40. However, over his unprecedented 40-plus-year career in beer, he helped develop the first barleywine to be made in the U.S., oversaw the launch of America’s first Christmas ale, and watched Anchor Steam enter the mainstream market, inspiring countless other craft breweries to launch in its shadow. Its signature steam beer-essentially a lager brewed at ale temperatures-derives from a historic style that originated during the Gold Rush, and would have died out if not for Anchor’s revival of it as a modern-day California Common.Ĭarpenter, who first quit his job at a telephone company to “do something different,” is humble about his accomplishments, merely saying he fell into brewing at the right time.

“Fritz had the vision and the nerve to charge more money for it.”Īmerican brewers are the most innovative in the world today without question.Ĭraft beer has roots in the freewheeling counter-culture movement of the ’60s, and Anchor channeled that spirit by taking the best of brewing traditions and giving them a new spin. “Back then there were lots of breweries but it was all just yellow beer competing against each other for price because they’re all the same,” says Carpenter. He first joined the brewing team in 1971 when he was only one of five employees and has since been a part of every new release to come out of the country’s oldest craft brewery.

Without the pioneering San Francisco brewery-which was saved from closure and re-invented by blue-cheese heir Fritz Maytag in 1965-there would be no West Coast-style IPAs, no steam beers, and no such thing as a seasonal.Īnchor’s current brewmaster Mark Carpenter has been along for the ride with Maytag for most of the last 50 years. When you look at the monstrous growth of the modern craft-beer landscape, it’s hard to overstate the importance of Anchor Brewing Company.

California breweries with big tree mark