Month: July 2023

On June 13, I read discouraging news reports from California that confirmed the Anchor Brewing Company was stopping distribution of their beers outside of California, and ceasing the production of their legendary Christmas Ale.

Twenty nine days later on July 12, I received an email from my wife’s niece in San Francisco: “Looks like they are closing all together. Sorry, Bill.”

Attached to the email was a link to a report from the NBC news affiliate in San Francisco with this headline: Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco to halt operations after 127 years.

Crushed again, I called our son. He quickly found several other similar headlines from other media outlets confirming the brewery’s closing.

Sam Singer spokesperson for the brewery cited numerous reasons for the closing, but mainly focused on declining sales in a beer market with lots of competition.

Accusatory fingers of blame will be pointed in many directions for the closing of Anchor Brewing. Most obvious will be the sale of the brewery in 2017 to Sapporo, a large brewer of beer from Japan.

I was shocked when I read about the sale of Anchor to Sapporo in 2017. I, who know nothing about the behind the scenes operation of a brewery, did not think this was a good fit.

I don’t think the Japanese culture has experienced the explosion of craft brewers like we have seen in America. I suspect Sapporo management didn’t properly understand that environment, or what had been carefully created at Anchor Brewing.

Years ago, in Richmond, Virginia, I witnessed a similar acquisition. Ukrops a very successful local, family run grocery store chain decided they were ready to sell. Apparently, they had lots of offers, but settled on Martins, a family run chain from Pennsylvania.

Martins also had ties to another large grocery store chain, Giant. In a few short years, Martins was gone. They could never match the quality and loyalty that was at the heart and soul of the Ukrops run stores. Likewise, I suspect that Sapporo never grasped the heart and soul of Anchor Brewing.

Sixty one Anchor Brewing employees lost their jobs with a “60 day notice and a separation package.” I hope those dedicated and loyal employees will quickly find comparable employment opportunities in the Bay Area without significant disruption to their lives.

I’d be curious to know who can claim and protect the beer recipes for all of the Anchor Brewing beers that have been brewed for so many years. I hope they are protected in such a way that would prohibit Sapporo from being able to cheaply mass brew the Anchor Brewing beers at the company’s large brewery in La Crosse, Wisconsin. A move like that would be shameful and disrespectful to the Anchor Brewing beers that are admired and respected by brewers and beer drinkers around the world.

Who knows, maybe there is another Fritz Maytag out there who is assessing this latest demise, and who at the last minute will make an offer that will rescue Anchor Brewing. That’s what Fritz Maytag did in 1965 when he purchased the struggling brewery. I would assume that Mr. Maytag who put his heart and soul into saving the brewery has lost some sleep over this disappointing announcement.

My wife’s brother-in-law sent me an article in the July 21 edition of the Washington Post by reporters Niha Masih and Praveena Somasundaram. Their article reported “that employees from the Anchor Brewery have submitted a proposal to Sapporo to purchase the brewery and run it as a co-op. Additionally, there are nearly two dozen bids with an interest in buying the historic brewery.”

Over the last few years, a handful of successful American craft breweries have been purchased by hefty foreign breweries. I wonder how the ledger sheets read for those acquisitions? Might there be other American craft breweries who are unstable economically and potentially facing closure?

Yes, I’m disappointed in this announcement.

But the closing of a beloved American brewery is nothing compared to other challenges in our world.

Thousands of miles from America, Ukraine continues to battle Russia and its heartless leader, Vladimir Putin.

In America, our political and economic divide continues to separate us from working together for the good of all.

Our physical and human infrastructure systems are worn and weary.

Our political system needs to be overhauled as we continue to wobble in a selfish instability.

We have become numb to the trigger pulling that is seen as the quickest and surest way to solve any problem with another American.

From sea to shining sea, we continue to experience the erosion of our dignity, patience, common sense, kindness, loyalty, and love.

And yet, I hold out hope that the current owner of Anchor Brewing, Sapporo Holdings, Ltd., will strongly consider the merit of the bid submitted by forty employees from Anchor to purchase the brewery.

And one more hope, as an imperfect human being and American, I will hold out hope that America will come to its senses and correct its challenges before America like Anchor Brewing is facing its closure.

As a parent, grandparent, and retired public school educator my heart hurts for the shooting tragedy that occurred after the Huguenot High School graduation. In a blink, lives are changed forever.

Honestly, I’m not surprised that we are processing another mass shooting.

Consider, these findings about gun violence, firearm ownership, single parent families, and the shrinking of religion.

The Johns Hopkins Center For Gun Violence Solutions has released its annual report.

The Center reported this grim data: In 2021, for the second straight year, gun deaths reached the highest number ever recorded. Nearly 49,000 people died from gun violence in the U.S. Each day, an average of 134 people died from gun violence—one death every 11 minutes.

A June 2021 survey of 10,606 American adults conducted by Pew Research Center found  four-in-ten  adults live in a household with a gun, including 30% who personally own one.

In August 2022, the Annie E. Casey Foundation reported nearly 24 million children live in single-parent families in the United States, or about one in every three kids across America.

Perhaps, you recently saw this headline: The Importance of Religion In The Lives of Americans Is Shrinking.

The Public Religion Research Institute collected data from 6,600 adults in all fifty states. The leading takeaway: “Just 16% of Americans surveyed said religion is the most important thing in their lives, that’s down from 20% a decade ago.”

Record setting deaths by gun violence, significant firearm ownership, millions of single parent families, and a country that every year slips further away from In God We Trust—forms quite a collision.

Yet, it seems perfectly clear to me that we are indifferent to the catastrophic collision revealed in this data. Additionally, we are numb to the repetitive reality found in headlines regarding another mass shooting.

If we think, we are insulated, immune, safe in our silos from being impacted by gun violence, firearm infatuation, fragile families, and crumbling churches, we are wrong.

Currently, we have a single frame of reference for solving a problem—take out a gun and shoot the problem.

In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, actor Morgan Freeman, portrays Ellis Boyd Redding, a prisoner who has served forty years of a life sentence for committing murder.

In an appearance before the parole board, Mr. Redding is asked if he is sorry for what he did. Mr. Redding affirms that everyday he regrets his decision.

But, Mr. Redding also makes a revealing reflection about his act of violence. He states: “I look back on the way I was then— a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone, and this old man is all that’s left.”

No parent would turn down the opportunity to try and talk “some sense” into the raging mind of a loved one before the trigger is pulled. Regrettably, we keep missing the opportunity to talk.

As a retired educator, I know the planning that goes into a high school graduation ceremony. Years ago, safety was on the radar, but not like it is now.

After the Huguenot shooting, safety plans for graduation ceremonies are changed forever. School systems and municipalities must maintain interior security strategies that are working. But now, they will be required to design and implement a safety perimeter for the exterior of the building too.

Of course, no mass shooting is immune from comments by politicians.

Finger pointing and heated words are worthless. Instead of negligent posturing, why not commit to the hard work of building the relationships needed to solve our gun violence?

With regard to a solution, I believe these words from Anne Sullivan capture our situation: “We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.”

This is an urgent matter.

We can no longer afford to be afraid of change. Nor can we continue to shrink from our responsibility to find logical and reasonable solutions.

Do we really want future reports from Johns Hopkins to document even more deaths per minute?

Do we want to continue to miss opportunities to “talk some sense into ourselves?”

We are overdue to set aside our differences and to commit to the hard work required to solve the mentality of pulling the trigger of a firearm as the way to fix a problem.

At this very moment, a troubled, frustrated, ready to snap human being is forming the next devastating headline.

Haven’t we had enough?

Want to improve schools? Help families
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Saturday, July 8, 2023

The headline on a recent oped written by Virginia Del. Mike Cherry caught my attention: “Want to improve schools? Start by empowering parents,” June 30.

Del. Cherry used this opportunity to bash Democrats, noting their failure to support specific education legislation in the Virginia General Assembly.

Unfortunately, our politicians spend too much time criticizing each party while accomplishing little on behalf of students, teachers and parents.

Everyone has an opinion about public education and how to fi x our schools. Those opinions cover lots of topics complete with multiple recommendations, but rarely does anyone talk about a significant challenge to every classroom: the erosion of our families.

In August 2022, The Annie E. Casey Foundation reported that nearly 24 million children live in single-parent families in the United States, or about 1 in every 3 kids across America.

Del. Cherry referenced data from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission related to disruptive student behaviors in our schools. From the teachers surveyed: “56% said behavior is a ‘very serious issue,’ while 24% called it a ‘serious’ problem.”

I wonder how many of Virginia’s disruptive students come from single-parent homes?

Republicans and Democrats can talk all they want about introducing legislation to “empower teachers with the support they need to allow them to better handle discipline in their classrooms.”

Yet, those same teachers who confirmed their concerns about disruptive student behaviors can unequivocally state there will be no empowering of classroom teachers until we address the challenges our families face every day.

This is because our teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade understand: For a student, it all starts at home.

Want to improve our schools?

Then embrace what our classroom teachers have known for many years: It all starts at home.
Virginia, we are overdue to halt the erosion of our families.

Bill Pike Henrico

Author’s note: This letter to the editor was written in response to an Op-Ed piece that appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on June 30, 2023. If you have a family member, relative, friends, and neighbors who teach in public schools, please consider sharing this letter with them. No pressure, thanks, Bill Pike

Tuesday, June 13, my wife emailed me this headline: Anchor Brewing Ceases National Distribution, Discontinues Beloved Christmas Ale.

For several minutes, I kept repeating to myself—I can’t believe this. Eight days later, I can’t still believe it.

I reached out to my wife’s sister and her family in Los Angeles and San Francisco for confirmation. Later that afternoon, I had article links verifying the announcement.

Subsequently, I have told the California family— in the future, don’t come east for a visit without Anchor Brewing’s beers in your suitcase.

I remember in college, Colorado’s Coors Beer wasn’t distributed east of the Mississippi River. People found subtle and not so subtle ways to bring Coors to the East Coast. Eventually, Coors expanded east, and a brewery was built near Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Who knows, maybe clever beer enthusiasts will find the means to distribute Anchor Brewing beers beyond the California borderlines.

My first tasting of Anchor Steam Beer came in the summer of 1980. My wife and I were on a trip to California to visit her sisters and their families. We’ve never forgotten our drive up the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

While in northern California, a cousin took us to Los Gatos for dinner at the Good Earth. That’s where I had my first Anchor Steam Beer. I admired the iconic label with the blue anchor, and the copper, amber color of the beer in the glass was a pretty sight.

Years later, when we visited our oldest daughter in Chicago, I always made a trip to Binny’s. Binny’s is a retailer who specializes in beer, liquor, and wine. Binny’s carried Anchor Brewing beers that would never make it to Virginia. One winter, Binny’s stocked a remarkable dark winter wheat beer from Anchor. That beer was one not to be forgotten.

But in 1965, Anchor Brewing was on the verge of being totally forgotten. The brewery was tilting toward bankruptcy, when Fritz Maytag, (yes, from the Maytag appliance manufacturer), rescued the struggling brewery.

With Mr. Maytag at the helm, the brewery regained its footing. Mr. Maytag learned about brewing from the ground up, and he corrected imperfections from the past.

He took the critical steps to improve the hygiene process in the brewing of their beers. Ensuring the integrity of the product and making required investments in new equipment were essential. Woven into those changes was a nudge toward the future. Mr. Maytag positioned the brewery to become an early innovator and leader in the craft brewing industry.

Over the years, the portfolio of beers created by the brew masters is impressive. The quality, handmade craftsmanship of their brewing did not go unnoticed. Other brewers and beer aficionados recognized that something special was taking place at Anchor Brewing.

That specialness was grounded in an appreciation for tradition, but also an untethered capacity to brew new beers beyond the traditional offerings. The brewery’s Zymaster series was an example of brewing beyond the established norms.

Since 1896, Anchor Brewing has continued to survive. Clearly, they have been a part of multiple transformations in America’s brewing history. But, I wonder if this latest decision could be the beginning of the brewery’s end?

In 2017, Anchor Brewing was purchased by Sapporo, a jumbo Japanese brewery. Sensing a potential instability, Anchor brewing employees unionized in 2019. This was followed in 2021 with a total redesigning of the brewery’s iconic labels and packaging.

When a large international brewer gobbles up a smaller brewery, at some point the purchaser is going to take a deeper look into the pennies needed to operate Anchor Brewing. The San Francisco Chronicle article quoted a company spokesman who stated that “seventy percent of the brewery’s sales come from California.”

Shipping beer from California to forty nine states isn’t inexpensive. For example, to reduce distribution costs, some West Coast brewers have built breweries on the East Coast.

Stopping the distribution of its beers outside of California is significant. However, ending the brewing of The Anchor Christmas Ale is an incompetent corporate decision direct from the Ebenezer Scrooge playbook. Not only was the beer a treat, but the label each year featured a different hand drawn tree by artist, Jim Stitt.

Writing to the San Francisco Chronicle about this decision, a former brewer at Anchor, Garrett Kelly said: “The loss of a beer as iconic as the Anchor Christmas Ale, the first American holiday beer post prohibition, is a loss for not only beer nerds like me, but anyone with an interest in preserving culture against the grinding pressure of corporate Darwinism.”

On the afternoon of June 13, I went to my local grocery store. The store had recently started to carry Anchor Steam Beer again. To counter this discouraging news, I decided to purchase a six pack.

When I reached into the cooler to grab the six pack of bottled beers, I nearly experienced a beer fatality.

In the beer industry, the cardboard packaging that carries the beer bottles in called a sleeve. As I grabbed the sleeve’s built in handle, one of the glued seams failed and separated. I almost dropped a six pack of beer on to the hard surfaced terrazzo floor.

Luckily, despite my age, my reflexes were quick enough to catch and control the six pack before it crashed to the floor.

Not wanting another Anchor loyalist to have a similar scare, I let the store’s manager know my experience.

I came home, took out a pint glass, opened the bottle, and briskly poured the beer into the glass. In appearance, my old friend looked just as fresh and healthy from my first pour in Los Gatos 43 years ago.

Since Tuesday, I’ve thought a bit more about the failure of the glued seam on the six pack sleeve.

Was that the caused by a combination of temperature changes and humidity levels, or was this a Sapporo penny pitching decision—a less sturdy grade of cardboard and a watered down adhesive?

I’ll never know that answer.

If I was a lot younger, maybe I would organize a boycott or an interception of Sapporo beers in America.

Sometimes, James Thurber’s Walter Mitty, takes over my imagination.

I imagine that I’m the leader of a squadron of F-18 pilots from the United States Air Force, and I follow orders to intercept a commercial transport airliner loaded with Sapporo beers headed for America. The squadron escorts the plane back to Japan.

Or, I’m the commander of a team of Navy SEALS, and we seize a cargo ship loaded with Sapporo Beer that was headed for the port in San Francisco. That seized Sapporo beer is shipped to gardeners in America’s southeastern states where the beer will be used to kill slugs in flower gardens.

Luckily for Sapporo, my Walter Mitty intrusions are only harmless daydreams. But if my rock slinging pal from the Andy Griffith Show, Ernest T. Bass, gets riled up over the Anchor Brewing story, then all I can say is protect your windows.

I recently came across a few single cans of Sapporo’s Premium beer in the import section of a store that specializes in the selling of beer and wine. When I picked up this 22 ounce can of beer, I was surprised to read that the beer had been brewed in the Long An Province of Vietnam.

Upon further review, I learned that Sapporo uses the former G. Heileman Brewery in La Crosse, Wisconsin to brew its beers for American consumers. Perhaps that explains why the cost of one can of Sapporo Premium Lager was only $2.99.

Additionally, brewing their flagship beer in Wisconsin, makes me question Sapporo’s loyalty to it own brand and the legacy of their brewers in Japan.

From what I can tell, media coverage of the Anchor Steam distribution has been sparse compared to the coverage given to the decline of Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light after the company pushed its best selling beer into “a social media promotion with a trans influencer in April 2023.”(NPR)

Ok, enough whining.

At this point, I will cling to the hope that family members in California will have empathy on an old geezer and smuggle Anchor Brewing six packs in their suitcases when they fly to Virginia.

Yes, I’m disappointed in this boneheaded Sapporo decision.

But, I’m hoping the loyalty and persistence of Anchor Brewing employees, and its now California only consumers will sustain the brewery beyond Sapporo’s mindless meddling.