For San Francisco beer drinkers, the biggest open question is whether Anchor Steam will flow again from Potrero Hill. The brewery shut down in 2023 after 127 years. Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya announced on May 31, 2024, that he was buying the company and its assets, and said he planned to restart it and keep operations in San Francisco. Since then, progress has been slow and mostly quiet, with a few public signs.

The label clue

In early July, KQED reported that Anchor had applied for and received approval from the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau for two beer labels: Anchor Steam Beer and Old Foghorn ale. Both use the original illustrations by Jim Stitt, who designed Anchor's labels for 45 years. Fans had blamed the brewery's 2021 rebrand, which swapped the vintage art for a large two-tone logo, for part of its sales slide. "Some people might think that it's not a big deal, but it really was one of the nails in the coffin for us," former brewery worker Patrick Costello told KQED.

KQED also noted that on June 19, Ulukaya posted an Instagram photo of himself watching a World Cup match inside the Anchor taproom. When a KQED reporter visited, lights were on inside and the loading dock doors were open. Former union workers, who belonged to ILWU Local 6, have said they want their jobs back. Ulukaya did not respond to KQED's request for comment, and no official reopening date has been announced.

How Anchor got here

Anchor's roots go back to the Gold Rush, when German brewer Gottlieb Brekle began making steam beer in San Francisco. Ernst F. Baruth and his son-in-law Otto Schinkel Jr. bought the brewery in 1896 and named it Anchor. It was destroyed in the 1906 fire, shut down during Prohibition, burned again in 1944, and closed in 1959 before being revived.

In 1965, Fritz Maytag bought 51% of the struggling brewery for a few thousand dollars and took full ownership in 1969. He began bottling in 1971 and moved Anchor into a former coffee roastery on Potrero Hill in 1979. Anchor became an early model for American craft brewing. Its Christmas Ale, porters and barley wine helped inspire later breweries. In 1989, a batch interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake was sold with an upside-down label and became known as "Earthquake Beer."

Maytag sold the company in 2010. Sapporo bought it for $85 million in 2017, and in 2019 Anchor's workers voted to join the ILWU, making it the first unionized craft brewery in the country. Sales kept falling, and in July 2023 Sapporo shut Anchor down. A worker cooperative tried to buy it, but Ulukaya's purchase came first.