A shame they weren’t able to adapt to modern beer tastes. As long as I can remember, I've thought of them as the mediocre beer I’ll begrudgingly drink only if all other options are exhausted.
If they adapted to modern tastes they wouldn't really be steam beer anymore. They'd be another beer brewed the same way as the others. At which point you're calling non steam beer steam beer.
They were only a "holdout" insofar as they sued anyone else who used that process. They were kind of a shitty corporate citizen and I'm not sad to see them go.
In the bottle it seems to lose everything for some reason
I never buy it in the bottle, but I get it on tap
But I’ll admit there are a zillion options that are similar or better now. The market changed a lot
I’d guess bottles are the majority of the business and I think that product is inferior
I don’t know what the other breweries do, maybe it’s just freshness and inventory, or a better or more consistent bottling
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I should also add that I lived in SF, so it’s definitely possible that most customers out of city think of them as a bad bottled beer brand, whereas I had a different impression
Canning has significant upfront costs that mean that for small operations it's not easier or cheaper. At the scale of Anchor, it's viable, but does require a significant investment in retooling.
That said, I’ve only had it bottled, never on tap.
So was it bland or malty? Those seem mutually exclusive to me.
I'm generally a fan of steam beers/california commons because of the very dark malt forward flavor. It was one of my favorite beer styles to brew and drink.
Do you like Munich dunkels?
>I guess Sierra Nevada