The Smithsonian Has Acquired Anchor Brewing Relics, Adding Them to its Beer Exhibition in Washington D.C.

The craft beer world is still reeling from the closure of the original American craft brewery, Anchor Brewing, which was cruelly sprung on all of us this July in an announcement literally released in the middle of the night. A few months later, public enmity toward the ownership at Sapporo remains, and there have been a few unrealistic attempts to bring the Anchor brand back from the dead, none of which seemed to gain any momentum. But at the very least, we can now say that the relics and historic materials of the original brewery–a history of the most important brewery in the history of the American craft beer movement–will be preserved, thanks to their newly announced acquisition by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Working with employees of the now-shuttered Anchor, museum curator Theresa McCulla announced that a wide range of items such as brewing charts, photographs, blueprints, signage, tools, barrels, tiles and more have been donated to the museum from the brewery, originally founded in 1896. These materials will join the museum’s larger beer collection, some of which is displayed in the exhibition “FOOD: Transforming the American Table” exhibition. As they put it: “In the section ‘Brewing a Revolution,’ visitors see artifacts, archival materials and photographs that originated in the homebrewing and microbrewing movements of California and Colorado in the 1960s through 1980s—the beginning of the craft beer ‘revolution’—including items previously collected from Anchor Brewing Co.”

The legendary Fritz Maytag acquired a controlling stake of Anchor Brewing in 1965, and set about modernizing the facilities and production after a long period of downtrending business when almost the entirety of all American beer was produced by just a couple large companies. In the years that followed, the industry pioneer would revamp the trademark Steam Beer into a persistent company flagship, as well as introduce some of the first modern commercial examples of beer styles including Porter (1972), barleywine (1975) and pale ale/IPA (1975). The latter, Anchor Liberty Ale, should rightly be regarded as one of the most influential beers in American history, one of the first hop-forward brands showcasing the flavors of American hop varietals, a full five years before Sierra Nevada Pale Ale would first arrive in 1980.

Sadly, the museum currently has no plans for a full, stand-alone exhibition related specifically to Anchor, but the materials collected will be available to historians and students, or other museums, and may find their way into future exhibitions.

“This donation is significant to our American brewing history collection because it preserves the history and contributions of Anchor Brewing Co. of San Francisco, California,” said museum curator Theresa McCulla. “This tremendously influential business is widely recognized as the first American microbrewery. The ingenuity and dedication to the craft of brewing modeled at Anchor Brewing Co. inspired generations of brewers and changed the course of the industry.”