thought they could out-drink me! Faugh! It was steam beer. I had learned more expensive brews. Not for years had I drunk steam beer... Frank Norris's 1899 novel McTeague, set in San Francisco, sets the stage with a reference to steam beer in its opening paragraph: It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint on Polk Street. He had a thick gray soup; heavy, underdone meat, very hot, on a cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On his way back to his office, one block above, he stopped at Joe Frenna's saloon and bought a pitcher of steam beer. It was his habit to leave the pitcher there on his way to dinner.... By and by, gorged with steam beer, and overcome by the heat of the room, the cheap tobacco, and the effects of his heavy meal, he dropped off to sleep. When he marries, his wife convinces him to adopt more refined habits: She broke him of the habit of eating with his knife, she caused him to substitute bottled beer in the place of steam beer, and she induced him to take off his hat to Miss Baker, to Heise's wife, and to the other women of his acquaintance. California Common beer According to the Beer Judge Certification Program, the term California Common beer, is "narrowly defined around the prototypical Anchor Steam example", and other commercial examples include Skyscraper Brewing Company Lug Nut Lager, Moab Brewery Rocket Bike Lager, Southampton West Coast Steam Beer, Old Dominion Victory Amber, Flying Dog Old Scratch Amber Lager, Schlafly's Pi Common, Linden Street Common Lager, Eagle Steam Beer and Cosmic Brewing Company Plead the Fifth common lager. The style "showcases the signature Northern Brewer hops (with woody, rustic or minty qualities) in moderate to high strength", is fermented with "a lager yeast, but one that was selected to thrive at the cool end of normal ale fermentation temperatures", and was traditionally fermented in open fermenters. Other varieties of "steam beer" Adam Wood Steam Brewery is listed as having been sold in 1859. A British brewery, the Lincolnshire Steam Beer Co., derives its name from the steam-powered brewing machinery. When Canadian brewer Sleeman introduced a product called Steam Beer in Canada in 1999,