Anchor Brews A Tradition For 45 Years Strong

Dave Burkhart won’t say that Anchor Brewing Company is the very first brewery since Prohibition to make a Christmas ale, as there might be a brewery somewhere that may have made a holiday brewski earlier than 1975.

But Anchor’s the only brewery that, for 45 years running, has made a new Christmas ale from a completely different recipe every year, complete with a new label with a different tree on its bottle. “Both the label and the beer have evolved, and it’s not different by accident,” says Burkhart, brewery historian and design and graphics manager. “It’s  very deliberate, and it’s a very interesting story.”

The story starts back in 1975 with owner Fritz Maytag. He had just returned that summer, after a trip to England, and he decided to make a true English ale. The ale was very similar – but had its own recipe – to the brewery’s Liberty Ale, an ale made to celebrate Paul Revere’s famous ride. 

So, he brewed this pale ale, and he decided he would hire an artist to design the label, and he hired illustrator Jim Stitt to design the label, which called it “Our Special Ale,” and said “Merry Christmad and A Happy New Year, featured a Christmas tree. Initially, Maytag had decided that when he was going to do the special Christmas ale again, he would feature a different recipe and also a different artist so he hired Richard Elmore to illustrate the giant sequoia on the label. “Fritz was inspired by the labels of Mouton Rothschild, whose labels had featured the artistry of Braque, Dali, and Chagall,” Burkhart says.

But in 1977, he decided changing the recipe and changing the tree was enough so he re-hired Jim Stitt, who at 92 years of age, is still designing the labels of the Christmas ale. Many of the trees over the years were draw from actual trees that grew on Maytag’s property in Napa Valley. “Jim is still drawing labels for us,” Burkhart says.

For the first few years, the Christmas ale was a pale ale. But in 1982, everyone at the brewery loved that particular pale ale so much that it became the brewery’s new Liberty Ale. So, in 1983, to distinguish the Christmas ale from the Liberty Ale, they brewed a brown ale, which they continued until 1987. In 1987, Maytag got married, and he brewed a special “bridale,” or “bridal ale,” which was basically just a spiced up version of the 1986 Christmas ale.  Maytag and his employees liked it so much that they decided to do spiced brown ales from 1987 onward. That year, two trees were on the label to symbolize Maytag and his wife.

“Every label has a story,” Burkhart says.

In 1995, a palm tree was featured on the label: Maytag was on vacation in Hawaii, and the team was searching for a tree to feature, and they decided to do one of the coconut tree that was beside the pool he lounged around while on vacation.

In 2003, which was the 200^thanniversary of the Lewis & Clark expedition, the label featured the sitka spruce, which was first identified by the explorers. And the pine cone on the neck label, which was taken directly from Lewis’s journal, which the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia had allowed the brewery to do.

The San Francisco Christmas tree in Golden Gate park, which is a Monterrey cypress, was featured in 2010. Burkhart, who had been involved in the label making since 1994, took Stitt out to the park to sketch the tree. The tree on the label is also notable because the brewery labeled it “Cupressus macrocarpa,” but scientists over the years had changed this Latin designation to a different one, “Hesperocyparis macrocarpa.” An arborist from across the country took the time to tell Anchor Steam that they got the scientific name wrong, but that he had absolutely loved following the beer.

“This mistake made us happy in a weird way because it meant that people were really paying attention,” Burkhart says. “We actually have quite a following among botanists, arborists and other people who are really into trees.”

In 2010, Stitt drew another giant sequoia for the label, but this time, it was a 40-year-old sequoia, which also symbolized the brewery’s 40^thChristmas ale. “Jim was always getting asked if he’d drawn all the trees on our Christmas ale labels so I thought it would be fun if Jim drew the giant sequoia  that Richard Elmore had drawn for our 1976 label,” Burkhart says, adding that Stitt could now officially say he’d drawn all the trees, if not all the labels.

This year’s tree is the Thuja plicata, more commonly known as the western arborvitae or the western redcedar (and redcedar is one word to distinguish it from real cedar trees, as it’s in the cypress, not cedar, family). “It’s often used for shingles on houses, and it’s an evergreen conifer, native to California,” Burkhart says. “And it’s beautifully drawn by Jim.”

Stitt and the entire design team begin work on the label immediately after the beer is released in November. But the beer itself is first brewed for international sales in summer, as it gets shipped to Sweden and Japan. Christmas ales meant for domestic consumption are brewed in September and October. But the first year, it was brewed in November, and it was released on Dec. 16. “We’ve gotten a bit better at brewing it earlier,” Burkhart says.

Burkhart started working at Anchor Steam in 1991, when the tree was a birch. That also was the first year that the brewery bottled magnums of Christmas ale. That first year, they bottled 103 – two bottles stayed in the lab, and the rest were sold. In 1992, the brewery made 1,992 bottles, then 1,993 bottles in 1993, and then dramatically increased the number of magnums they produced. “Fritz originally came up with it as a fun idea to send a magnum of beer as a gift to a vintner friend who had sent him a magnum of sparkling wine,” Burkhart says.

“Fritz started a tradition that not only inspired us at the brewery but has inspired a host of wonderful Christmas ales by other breweries,” he says.