Liberty Ale banner

This banner hung on the wall in the brewhouse at Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco. Anchor brewers first brewed Liberty Ale on April 18, 1975, in commemoration of the two-hundredth anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride through the Massachusetts countryside, warning American colonists that British soldiers were approaching. With a refreshing bitterness supplied by American-grown Cascade hops, Liberty Ale was a forerunner of the India Pale Ale style, which became the most popular style of microbrewed, or “craft,” beer by the late twentieth century. The eagle pictured on Liberty Ale’s label came from a nineteenth-century book of designs for banknotes and stock certificates.

In 1965, Fritz Maytag III had purchased the historic but struggling Steam Beer Brewing Company (later, Anchor Brewing Company). With his entrepreneurial roots and zeal for science, Maytag revitalized the brewery. He perfected the brewery’s recipe for steam beer, an effervescent style that had originated in nineteenth-century San Francisco, and brewed European styles—porter, barleywine, pale ale—then unfamiliar to many Americans. As a self-taught brewer and savvy entrepreneur, Maytag inspired many who dreamed of opening their own small breweries. Historians consider Anchor Brewing Company to have been the first post-Prohibition American microbrewery. Microbreweries, brewpubs, and “craft” breweries proliferated throughout the nation in the 1970s, 1980s, and beyond. In August 2023, Sapporo USA liquidated Anchor Brewing Company.

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