Wondering What Happened to Anchor Brewing? You're Not Alone.

It’s been almost two years since Anchor Brewing produced its final beer, bringing to an end one of the nation’s earliest craft brewing success stories. The fate of the brewery remained unclear in the months that followed: would a group of former employees take it over? Would its facilities and equipment be sold off? The 2024 announcement that Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya had bought the brewery seemed like a win for all involved at the time — except that it’s now a year later, and there’s been almost no news from Anchor Brewing since then.

Should craft beer fans still expect a revival of Anchor Steam or the brewery’s Christmas Ale in the near future? In a new investigation for The Francisco Standard, Kevin Truong and Astrid Kane explored the current state of the brewery — and sought to answer the questions raised by its radio silence.

Perhaps the biggest and most ominous takeaway from their report is that the brewery’s delays getting back up and running are themselves a cause for concern. Brian Reccow of the hospitality consulting firm The Specialistas told the reporters, “Breweries are like ships, in that they’re always needing to be maintained.” Reccow also suggested that certain parts of the facility, including the refrigeration system, could need repair or replacement.

Other onetime Anchor Brewing employees have heard little to nothing about the possibility of returning to work there. The last person to hold the title of brewmaster, Dane Volek, has left the industry entirely.

Anchor Brewing Has a Buyer and Plans for a Return

Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya has purchased the craft brewery

There does seem to be some work being planned for the brewery; the head of the Potrero Dogpatch Merchants Association told Truong and Kane that Anchor Brewing had reached out to get an estimate on what it would cost to renovate the building’s exterior. That’s been the extent of it, however — a sense of some forward motion, but not nearly what you’d respect.

For now, the possibility of an iconic brewery making a phoenix-like return seems increasingly hazy. The Standard’s report does mention “a skeleton crew of maintenance workers” on site, but otherwise, there’s been virtually no activity. It’s a situation where a lack of news certainly doesn’t feel like good news.

Meet your guide

Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…