Anchor Brewing Company is an American alcoholic beverage producer, operating a brewery on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, California. The brewery was founded in 1896 and was purchased by Frederick Louis Maytag III in 1965, saving it from closure. It moved to its current location in 1979. It is one of the last remaining breweries to produce California common beer, also known as Steam Beer, a trademark owned by the company. In 2010, the company was purchased by The Griffin Group, an investment and consulting company focused on beverage alcohol brands. The brewery became one facet of the Anchor Brewers & Distillers, LLC portfolio. On 3 August 2017, it was acquired by Japanese brewing giant Sapporo Breweries for US$85 million. History Anchor began during the California Gold Rush when Gottlieb Brekle arrived from Germany and began brewing in San Francisco. In 1896, Ernst F. Baruth and his son-in-law, Otto Schinkel, Jr., bought an old brewery at 1431 Pacific Avenue and named it Anchor Brewery. The brewery burned down in the fires that followed the 1906 earthquake, but was rebuilt at a different location in 1907. There is no record of what Anchor did during Prohibition, but it resumed serving Steam Beer after Repeal, possibly as the only steam brewing company still in operation. However the brewery burned down yet again within the year, and it relocated once more, this time to a building a few blocks away. The brewery continued operations into the late 1950s, but suffered heavily from the country's increasingly strong preference for the light lagers produced by the megabreweries. Whereas there had been more than 4,000 breweries at the turn of the twentieth century, only 70 remained by the 1960s. Anchor shut its doors briefly in 1959, but was bought and reopened the following year. By 1965, however, it was doing so poorly that it nearly closed again. Anchor's situation continued to deteriorate largely because the current owners lacked the expertise, equipment, and attention to cleanliness that were required to produce consistent batches of beer for commercial consumption. The brewery gained a reputation for producing sour, bad beer. In 1965, Frederick Louis "Fritz" Maytag III bought the brewery, saving it from closure. He purchased 51 percent of the brewery for several thousand dollars, and later purchased the brewery outright. It moved to its current location near Potrero Hill in 1979. Turning the failing brewery around required more