All three are top-sellers in the craft-beer market, and they're benchmarks in their respective styles. Yet - perhaps in a sign of their diminished standing among experts - it's been a decade since any won a medal at the Great American Beer Festival.
But forget the experts. Try this exercise yourself. You'll be surprised by either how much your palate has changed or by how damningly easy it is to take excellence for granted.
Anchor Steam
Introduced: 1896.
Last Great American Beer Festival medal: 1992 (bronze).
Claim to fame: When washing-machine heir Fritz Maytag revived the brand in the late '60s, it would set in motion the entire microbrew craze, proving to the world that America could actually brew something other than a pallid yellow lager. By 1977, it would be described as "the Rolls-Royce" of U.S. beer.
Gratuitous diss: It's a training beer for novices.
Tasting notes: The aroma is delicate and enticing. The body is dry, smooth and thoroughly refreshing. First you taste its malt, delicately sweet and almost buttery. Then a tight, almost subtle, bite of hops cleanses the palate and urges you to follow with another quaff. Anchor Steam is a marvel of perfect balance.
My take: Anchor Steam is a wonderful easy-sipper, maybe the ideal ballpark beer. But in a world of hop monsters, malt bombs and high-octane mind-numbers, it's a "safe" beer that may never again get the credit it deserves.
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Introduced: 1980.
Last GABF medal: 1995 (gold).
Claim to fame: Hardly anybody in America drank ale when Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi started scavenging equipment for their tiny brewery in Chico, Calif. Using whole hops (not pellets or extracts), they designed the prototypical West Coast ale, a style that would become so popular even Anheuser-Busch would copy it eventually.
Gratuitous diss: Cascades hops are so 1999.
