Someone at the long-dormant Anchor Brewing building is watering the plants. 

Nearly three years after production ceased at the art deco icon in Potrero Hill, the whir of machinery is again audible on De Haro Street. On Thursday afternoon, a loading dock gate was half-open. A worker sporting dark sunglasses and a shock of pink hair approached a door, gave a furtive glance in both directions, and badged herself in. 

The pace of activity seems to have intensified in recent weeks, as has the whirl of the rumor mill surrounding the brewer’s long-anticipated return. Yet the Anchor Steam has not resumed flowing. Nor has the Liberty Ale. And definitely not Christmas Ale. Unlike Willy Wonka’s mysteriously active chocolate factory (opens in new tab), where “nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out,” the situation at Anchor Brewing could be characterized as “plenty of people are going in, but no beer is coming out.”

The Standard spoke to more than half a dozen neighbors and industry insiders, most of whom agreed to offer their thoughts off the record. Some were keen to share even the tiniest developments, with one curious neighbor reporting the appearance of orange cones to keep employee parking organized. 

As we wait for more substantive updates, here’s what we know about Anchor’s future.

Two years ago this month, billionaire Chobani yogurt magnate Hamdi Ulukaya donned an Anchor cap and posted a video (opens in new tab) to Instagram. In it, he announced that he’d purchased San Francisco’s most storied brewery — and solemnly promised to revive the standard-bearer for the Golden State’s only home-grown style of beer, California common lager. 

But the company has maintained total radio silence ever since. On several occasions, we have visited the brewery and spoken with employees who declined to comment. Former Anchor workers report that they’re completely shut out too.

As far as anyone knows, the official plan remains unchanged: Ulukaya aims to reopen Anchor. But insiders in the Bay Area craft brewing scene are growing alarmed by the lack of progress. 

Craft brewing experts agree on one point: The Potrero Hill building is in poor condition, a state of dereliction that may have grown more dire with time. “There’s a lot stacked against them. The water treatment was a disaster,” one veteran said, referring to a 2024 episode in which noxious odors befouled Potrero Hill for two days, emanating from tanks that had supposedly been cleaned.

The fetid stench hasn’t returned, but fixing the wastewater issue in the 90-year-old building may be more challenging than previously thought. One person threw around a highly specific figure — $1.7 million — to tackle deferred maintenance and bring that one element of the brewery up to snuff. Ulukaya, this person added, “has deep pockets, but he’s been distracted with that new plant (opens in new tab) for Chobani” in upstate New York.

Several said they knew for a fact that the facility has been accepting deliveries of grain — which is both expensive and has an expiration date. 

“I saw them emptying out the silos that had the old grain in them, but I don’t know if they got more,” said Rockaway Beach brewmaster Arne Johnson, who drives past Anchor every day. “My boiler guy’s been working on their boiler for a while, but I don’t know anything else.”

Johnson says that, whatever Ulukaya’s vision, it may make more sense for Anchor to brew beer elsewhere. “It’s an antiquated system and takes a lot of manpower,” he said. “Obviously, I hope they keep brewing there, but it’s not a super-efficient brewery.”

Ulukaya’s vast financial resources mean he can execute on almost any aspiration, however quixotic. Still, reopening a brewery is more complicated than just flipping a switch, several observers said. And once it’s up and running, it might be prohibitively expensive to continue operating — an anchor around Ulukaya’s financial neck, so to speak.

The real risk is a number-cruncher or “someone who speaks billionaire” whispering into Ulukaya’s ear, souring his resolve with hard figures. “They can show him some bullshit projections about what you’d need to do to scale it,” one insider said. “Then we’d be dealing with a thing where Anchor comes back for a few years, only to go away again.”

Regan Long of Local Brewing transitioned to contract beermaking after a 2022 fire gutted her SoMa taproom. She agreed that Gordon Biersch is the only regional brewery that could take on a client the size of Anchor — but she’s skeptical. 

Anchor Steam, the flagship beer, is produced through an unusual, “coolship” process that doesn’t use traditional fermentation tanks. That means two things: It can’t easily be produced elsewhere, and the Potrero Hill brewery can’t easily pivot to producing other styles at scale. 

Gordon Biersch did not respond to a request for comment.

If Ulukaya’s team chooses not to produce Anchor Steam on-site, does that mean California common lager — which, historically, is cooled in rooftop open-air tanks, giving off visible “steam” — might vanish forever? Not quite.

“You can brew that style of beer in a closed vessel, but it would have a different flavor profile,” Long says. “It wouldn’t be Anchor.”