A mere 122 years after Anchor brewed its first beer, its famed flagship, Steam, will be canned for the first time.

The new 19.2-ounce cans, gold and emblazoned with the large blue Anchor logo, will hit mostly local, independent mom-and-pop shops and liquor stores in California this summer. Bottles will still be the norm for most retailers, with the introduction of limited cans, priced about $2.49 each, being sold in standard convenience stores in an effort to meet new customers searching for a quick "grab-and-go" pack.

"We've wanted to put Steam in a can for a long time, really since we started canning," says Scott Ungermann, brewmaster for Anchor Brewing. "The decision was always around three things: One was what size package should it be in; the other was when; and the third and most difficult was what should it look like. How do you translate Steam artwork to a can?"

Anchor has canned a number of beers — a couple wheat styles, a Meyer lemon lager, the California lager and the Liberty Ale — in 12-ounce packaging, but never its main beer. So when it came to canning the Steam, the bellwether of San Francisco's brewing history, the approach was a little different; the packaging needed to bear the iconic logo "front and center."

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"It's a big anchor, and that's what grabs you," Ungermann adds, noting that it took some time to work out the visual details of the packaging. The much easier decision it turned out, was the size of Steam's can. Anchor worked that out last year after realizing 19.2-ounce cans were the largest the company's canning line could handle, and that Steam, which accounts for roughly half the brewery's output, would stand apart from other styles more frequently available in that packaging.

"It's definitely a size a lot of breweries are coming out with, (but Steam's) going to sit as a pretty unique offering," he says. "What I've seen so far in 19.2 are light, drinkable, crush beers or bigger IPAs so to have a beer like Steam which is unique in itself, it's going to be very unique in that set."

Despite being acquired by Japanese brewery Sapporo in 2017, the cans won't go everywhere. They're not intended for export, at least not right now, and only about 5 percent of the Steam that Anchor makes will hit the canning line. Of the rest, 35 percent goes into kegs for draft and 60 percent will continue to be bottled.

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With the new packaging, Anchor hopes that people will re-embrace Steam as a shareable beer for drinkers to take to the park or to a barbecue. As Ungermann says, "The big can is a nice offering to put in the hands of people who may not have had it in quite some time, or ever."

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.

