Early California Antiques Shop

Acme Beer Poster 1935

Regular price $350.00

Acme Beer is back! And this poster is from before it went away. We like to think it might have made the Great Depression less depressing.

21″ x 27″.

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Acme was a transplant brewery from Seattle. Not many breweries made it through the 1906 earthquake and fire, and millions of dollars of beer were shipped from Seattle and bottled here. Within a year, the Olympia brewery converted the bottling plant into a full brewery, and Acme was born. (Brewery Gems has lots on Acme Brewing in SF from the first half of the 20th century.)

In the 1920s, Several breweries merged to form the California Brewing Association (including several in the Mission)  but only Sansome St and the National Brewery at Fulton and Webster were kept open. (Sansome St was sold off in 1929). They survived Prohibition by making Acme Light “near beer” with 0.5% alcohol (along with vinegar and syrup) but ramped back up after the 1933 Repeal.

Acme started advertising “real” beer before Prohibition officially ended and got a significant leg up on the competition. It served them well in the beginning:

After the war, Acme Brewing struggled to compete against the national breweries but didn’t make it.  The SF plant was sold in 1954 to an East Coast company attempting to go national, but the site was closed in 1958. Alas…

But weep not, the brand has been revived.


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