Anchor Steam Brewery, SF

I don’t like to drink beer, but I have to know a lot about it. As a bartender and a bartender school instructor, I not only serve and sell beer, but I also teach people who take my class about beer. I lecture my classes each week on how to pour a proper pint of beer, what a perfect Guinness pour looks like, the differences between a lager and an ale and why Hefeweizen comes garnished with a lemon. When my customers come into the bar and ask for a beer, I have to be ready to suggest a type of beer depending on their tastes and what we have in stock.

So in an attempt to educate myself more about the world of beer and hopefully develop a healthy palate for beer, I recently went on the Anchor Steam Brewery tour on Potrero Hill. The hour and a half tour of the brewery took us on three of the four floors in the brewery showing the entire process of how Anchor Steam produces their beer all the way to the packaging and shipping room.

The best part of the tour was the two-hour tasting. In the tasting room, Anchor Steam provided four of their beers on tap. While everyone in the tour group tasted all of the different beers, the brew master described the different flavors found inside each of the beers and encouraged everyone in the group to ask questions about the Anchor Steam company, its history and beer producing in general.

The Anchor Steam Brewery is truly a beer lover’s heaven. And as a non-beer drinker educator and seller myself, I found the tour extremely interesting, informative, and invaluable.