Anchor Brewing Company Records
name: label: Creator
content: Anchor Brewing Company
label: Names
content: Burkhart, David Aaron, 1954-
label: Names
content: Maytag, Fritz, 1937-
label: Donor
content: Minami, Mashashi
place: label: Place
content: California -- San Francisco
topic: label: Topic
content: Beer
label: Topic
content: Breweries
label: Topic
content: Brewing
label: Topic
content: Technical manuals
label: Topic
content: Testing
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: Collection donated by Anchor Brewing Company at Sapporo Beer, through President and CEO, Mashashi Minami, 2023.
creator: label: Creator
content: Anchor Brewing Company
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anchor Brewing Company Records
abstract: label: Summary
content: Collection documents the activities of Anchor Brewing Company of San Francisco, California.
bioghist: label: Historical
content: Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco, California, was a tremendously influential American brewery that is widely recognized as the first American microbrewery. Under the influential leadership of Fritz Maytag III, its owner from 1965 to 2010, Anchor Brewing Co. initiated a phenomenal wave of growth in the global brewing industry that came to be known as the microbrewing—now "craft beer"—revolution. 

Anchor Brewing Co. was founded in 1896, closed briefly during Prohibition, and reopened following repeal. In 1965, Fritz Maytag III (a member of the Iowa-based washing machine-making family, as well as the producers of Maytag Blue Cheese) bought a controlling stake in Anchor Brewing Co. At the time, the American brewing industry was highly consolidated. In 1965, about 200 American breweries made approximately 108 million barrels of beer. About 40 percent of this total came from the nation's five largest breweries and the industry would consolidate even further over the next fifteen years (Stack, M. A Concise History of America's Brewing Industry, 2003; Beer Institute 1993: 8). American beer had become big business, and yet Maytag envisioned something different: a brewery that would produce beer in small batches using artisan ingredients, traditional techniques, and European recipes that had not been brewed in the United States for more than a century, if ever. 

Speaking in a 2017 American Beer and Brewing oral history, Maytag said, "I went down to see the brewery not because I loved the beer; I really was not a beer enthusiast." Rather, Maytag had been a science enthusiast since childhood. "I had no idea what is was...but it had a magic effect on me." He purchased the company and taught himself how to brew beer. With the guidance of an unusually erudite owner, Anchor's historic "steam beer" recipe improved. Maytag continued with recipes that swung ever farther from the mainstream, as he experimented with styles he had tasted while traveling in Europe.

In the 1970s, virtually every beer on American supermarket shelves was a light lager style, often brewed with rice and corn. Anchor, in contrast, bottled porter, a dry-hopped ale, a barleywine, and its first annual Christmas Ale. In 1969, four years info Maytag's tenure at Anchor, his brewery produced only 800 barrels of beer. Maytag's revitalized brewery attracted waves of visitors—journalists, beer drinkers yearning for new flavors, and homebrewers curious about how he was making it all work—and the popularity of Anchor's beer grew. Over the course of forty-five years, Maytag navigated Anchor to the top of a new industry. Craft brewing started slowly in the 1970s, expanded geographically and numerically in the late 1980s—in 1985, for the first time, the U.S. counted more microbreweries than large-scale breweries—and exploded in the early 2000s (Elzinga, C. Tremblay, and V. Tremblay, "Craft Beer in the United States: History, Numbers and Geography," 2015: 252). 

Maytag shared ingredients with other upstart brewers, like Jack McAuliffe, founder of New Albion Brewing Company in Sonoma in 1976 (John "Jack" McAuliffe Oral History,2019-03-09 and Suzy Denison Oral History, 2019-11-17, American Beer and Brewing Oral History Collection, ). He inspired many others from afar, who experienced separate eureka moments tasting Anchor Steam Beer. 

When Maytag sold his brewery in 2010 to two investors from the spirits world--they vowed to build the Anchor brand into a new beer and spirits endeavor, but would sell the brewery in 2017 to Sapporo Holdings, who would liquidate the business in 2023--Admirers lauded Maytag as the nation's first microbrewer of modern times. Hamdi Ulukaya, founder and CEO of yogurt maker Chobani, purchased Anchor Brewing Company in 2024. 

The histories of Fritz Maytag and Anchor Brewing Company were interwoven with historical and cultural trends beyond beer: calls for consumer choice during an era of corporate consolidation; a spirit of entrepreneurial innovation that spurred novel modes of production, packaging, marketing, transportation, and advertising; and a return to slower, artisan production of food and drink following decades of increasing homogeneity. With origins in the counterculture, the consumer movement, and the "good food movement," microbrewing's impact rippled across realms of the social, the economic, and the gastronomic alike.

In 2023, the United States countted nearly 10,000 breweries, more than 99 percent of them small operations. The brewing industry supported nearly 2.4 million jobs (Beer Institute). The pace of craft beer's growth from the 1980s onward and the creation of new or changed relationships among growers, brewers, equipment manufacturers, marketing representatives, distributers, retailers, the media, and consumers—-began in many respects with Anchor Brewing Company. "It's hard to pin down because I was in the middle of it," Maytag said, when asked to reflect on Anchor's place in such transformations. "(We were really the only ones in the early days .... We were sort of there at the very beginning .... [L]ater ... we saw that it was a movement" (Fritz Maytag Oral History Interview, 2017-03-28, American Beer and Brewing Oral History Collection, NMAH.AC.1595).

Source

Acquistion Information Sheet, Theresa McCulla, Curator, Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History,2023
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 40 Cubic feet (102 boxes, 5 map folders)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1880s-2023
label: Date
content: bulk 1965-2010
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAH.AC.1591
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Advertisements
label: Type
content: Articles
label: Type
content: Beverage labels
label: Type
content: Blueprints
label: Type
content: Business cards
label: Type
content: Calendars
label: Type
content: Color slides
label: Type
content: Compact discs
label: Type
content: Correspondence
label: Type
content: Financial records
label: Type
content: Invoices
label: Type
content: Labels
label: Type
content: Negatives
label: Type
content: Newsletters
label: Type
content: Notebooks
label: Type
content: Notes
label: Type
content: Photographs
label: Type
content: Receipts (financial records)
label: Type
content: 16mm films
label: Type
content: Trademarks
label: Type
content: Videotapes
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: Collection is arranged into nine series. 

Series 1: Background Materials, 1905-2021			

Series 2: Beer Brewing Data, 1955-2023				

Series 3: Subject Files, 1916-2021, undated				

Series 4: Financial Materials, 1930s-1993				

Series 5: Legal Materials, 1979-2020				

Series 6: Advertising, Marketing and Sales Materials, 1963-2020, undated				

Series 7: Photographs, Negatives, Transparencies, and Slides, 1880s-2008				

Series 8: Oversize Materials, 1936-2007, undated			

Series 9: Audio Visual Materials, 1977-1999, undated
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: Collection processed by Alison Oswald, archivist, 2023-2024. An arrangement scheme for the papers was imposed during processing in the absence of a usable original order. Original file folder titles were retained in most cases.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Advertisements
label: Genre/Form
content: Articles
label: Genre/Form
content: Beverage labels
label: Genre/Form
content: Blueprints
label: Genre/Form
content: Business cards
label: Genre/Form
content: Calendars
label: Genre/Form
content: Color slides
label: Genre/Form
content: Compact discs
label: Genre/Form
content: Correspondence
label: Genre/Form
content: Financial records
label: Genre/Form
content: Invoices
label: Genre/Form
content: Labels
label: Genre/Form
content: Negatives
label: Genre/Form
content: Newsletters
label: Genre/Form
content: Notebooks
label: Genre/Form
content: Notes
label: Genre/Form
content: Photographs
label: Genre/Form
content: Receipts (financial records)
label: Genre/Form
content: 16mm films
label: Genre/Form
content: Trademarks
label: Genre/Form
content: Videotapes
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Collection consists primarily of business records documenting the activities of Anchor Brewing Company of San Francisco, California.  Materials include meeting minutes, brew books, photographs, slides, advertisements, financial records, beer labels, testing records, correspondence, and audio visual materials.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Materials
content: Materials in the Archives Center

Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Series: Beer (NMAH.AC.0060)

Walter H. Voigt Brewing Industry Collection (NMAH.AC.1195)

DFS Ad Agency Falstaff Beer Advertisements (NMAH.AC.0332)

Christian Heurich Brewing Company Records (NMAH.AC.1104)

Archives Center Brewing History Collection (NMAH.AC.1419)

American Beer Brewing Oral History Collection (NMAH.AC.1595)