Anchor Brewing Co. Christmas Ale tap handle
date: label: date made
content: 1995
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: One (1) tap handle
label: Description (Brief)
content: Clear tap handle with green and red writing. "Merry Christmas Happy New Year, 1995" "Our Special Ale" "Anchor Brewing Co."
label: Description
content: This tap handle was used to serve Our Special Ale, a winter warmer style of beer brewed by San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Company whose recipe changed every year and aged well. The first Our Special Ale, or Christmas Ale, was brewed in 1975, using 100% Cascade hops. From 1975 until 1987, the brewery produced Our Special Ale with blank neck labels, so customers could write their own holiday greetings to friends and then affix the labels to the bottles themselves. Each year, the brewery selected a different evergreen tree to feature on its label. The 1995 label features the Coconut Palm, Cocos nucifera.
label: Description
content: In 1965, Fritz Maytag III purchased the historic but struggling Steam Beer Brewing Company (later, Anchor Brewing Company). With his entrepreneurial roots and zeal for science, Maytag revitalized the brewery. He perfected the brewery’s recipe for steam beer, an effervescent style that had originated in nineteenth-century San Francisco, and brewed European styles—porter, barleywine, pale ale—then unfamiliar to many Americans. As a self-taught brewer and savvy entrepreneur, Maytag inspired many who dreamed of opening their own small breweries. Historians consider Anchor Brewing Company to have been the first post-Prohibition American microbrewery. Microbreweries, brewpubs, and “craft” breweries proliferated throughout the nation in the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond. In August 2023, Sapporo USA liquidated Anchor Brewing Company.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Christmas
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Food Technology
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Anchor Brewing Company through Mike Minami
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2023.0113.21
label: accession number
content: 2023.0113
label: catalog number
content: 2023.0113.21
objectType: label: Object Name
content: tap handle
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 19/32 in x 3 3/4 in x 1 in; 19.304 cm x 9.525 cm x 2.54 cm