I'm looking forward to trying this.
http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/20 ... -the-past/Anchor unveils a tribute to the past
Posted on 02/16/2011 at 12:24 pm by Jon Bonné in Beer, San Francisco
As we’re deep in the throes of Beer Week (see Scoop’s previous coverage), the city’s Mecca of craft beer, Anchor Brewing, is set tonight to unveil its newest project.
Brekle’s Brown is a brown ale developed by Anchor’s new brewmaster Mark Carpenter. Anchor’s history in San Francisco is long indeed and the name pays tribute to its first brewmaster, Gottlieb Brekle. In 1871 Brekle purchased a beer and billiards saloon and turned it into the Golden City Brewery, located at the time on Pacific near Russian Hill. Brekle brewed beer there until his death in 1888, and in 1896 it became the first incarnation of Anchor.
Carpenter, who began working with previous Anchor owner Fritz Maytag in 1971, only became brewmaster last year. But with the brewery’s new owners, he wanted to pay homage to Brekle — and Anchor’s history — by creating a new beer: “It was kind of a tribute from the new brewmasters of Anchor to the old brewmasters.”
Of course, it’s hard to deduce Brekle’s original style of beer, but Anchor opted for a brown ale not unlike the Christmas Ale made there in the mid-1980s. At 6 percent alcohol Brekle’s Brown might be a touch high for a session choice, but in another nod to the past Carpenter wanted a beer that went against the current trend of highly hopped, high-alcohol brews. (“My elbow goes at a certain rate so I don’t like the high alcohol,” he says.) He fine-tuned a highly malted profile that uses a single aromatic hop strain, Citra.
This isn’t Anchor’s first tribute to San Francisco’s bibulous legacy. Maytag’s Anchor Distilling produces whiskies under the Old Potrero label that pay homage to historic styles of the spirit, as well as to Hotaling’s, the whiskey warehouse that survived the 1906 earthquake.
We haven’t tasted it yet, but Brekle’s Brown will roll out this week on tap at bars across the Bay Area, including the Toronado, Comstock Saloon and Monk’s Kettle.
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