Podcast 6 was powered by a variety of Anchor Steam Beers from the San Francisco based brewery. The term steam beer refers to a lager beer brewed with lager yeast at higher fermentation temperatures leading to more carbonation. Steam beer is brewed without refrigeration or ice and as a result ferments at higher temperatures. Steam beer is also called California common beer and was associated with San Francisco and the Gold Rush. The term "steam" may come from the method of cooling the hot wort -- it was pumped up to the top of the brewery in San Francisco into shallow cooling pan where the Pacific Ocean winds cooled the wort and created steam. Such a shallow cooling pan is pictured below
Another "true story which may be true" as to why it is called steam beer is that due to the higher temperature of fermentation, steam beers had a high level of effervescence so that one had to let off "steam" i.e. carbonation. Because of the crude brewing process, steam beers were considered low class, blue collar beers but we found the four different Anchor Steams in the variety 12 pack very good to excellent. Here is a partial line up of Anchor Steam's offerings.
Our variety 12 pack had the first three beers above (regular, Liberty Ale, and Porter). The fourth in the 12 pack (but not pictured) was a wheat beer. Steam beers are thought to be related to German "Dampfbier (in German dampf=steam and bier = beer). However dampfbier is an ale.
The band NOFX references Anchor Steam beer in their song "Scavenger Type"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVpHxBRMhaw
Links to Topics in Beer Selection
- Amazon
- If you are going to buy from Amazon follow any of the Amazon links from our site first and we will get a small percentage of your purchase. It costs you nothing and helps us keep the beer flowing.
- Anchor Brewing - THe official web site
- Anchor Steam Beer - Straight to the beer we love
- Anchor Steam Beer Soap
- ??? or shameless plug