The taps may be dry, but Anchor Brewing Co.'s sudden closing means its San Francisco real estate will soon be put up for sale in another sign of the challenges facing the craft brew industry.

The 127-year-old beer maker, the world's oldest craft label, permanently shut down this month after years of failed efforts to revive the struggling brand. Anchor's four-parcel real estate portfolio is being prepared for liquidation, meaning a sale is imminent as the popular brewer's assets can now be picked apart for sale.

“It will be out on the market,” Anchor spokesman Sam Singer said in an email. The closing "was an extremely difficult decision. We recognize the importance and historic significance of Anchor to San Francisco and to the craft brewing industry, but the impacts of the pandemic, inflation, especially in San Francisco, and a highly competitive market, left the company with no option but to make this sad decision to cease operations."

Anchor's challenges accumulated at a point when other prominent beer labels around the world began facing similar hurdles. The craft beer industry, which grew exponentially over the past decade, began to slow several years ago as competition, labor shortages and the cost of doing business mounted.

While there were about 600 brewery openings around the country last year, about 250 closings were reported in a sign that the market is beginning to mature, according to the Brewers Association, which advocates for small and independent brewers.

For Anchor, the challenges now mean a liquidator will determine when to list its properties and set the price. Details for either decision were not immediately made clear.

The San Francisco-based company, which was sold for $85 million to Japanese brewing giant Sapporo in 2017, has housed its manufacturing operations across a handful of office, brewing and tasting room properties for the past four decades.

Combined, the four parcels located at the corner of Mariposa and De Haro streets about 2 miles south of downtown San Francisco are valued at roughly $85 million, according to city property records, right in line with Sapporo's purchase price.

Despite Anchor's solid reputation and place in beer history — even making an appearance in 1970s TV crime drama "The Streets of San Francisco" — the brand has struggled in recent years.

Sapporo initially acquired Anchor to "expand our beer business in the U.S. market," Sapporo President Masaki Oga told Japanese accounting regulators in a recent filing. Given the pandemic's impact on sales and San Francisco's prolonged lockdown, the Anchor parent company "implemented a variety of measures to improve the business, such as releasing new products, product renewals and making brand investments. However, Anchor’s business performance continued to be sluggish."

At the beginning of the pandemic's outbreak in 2020, about 70% of Anchor's revenue was reliant upon restaurants and bars, a slice of the economy hit hardest by closing mandates, capacity restrictions, health and safety concerns and later, severe employee shortages. Anchor tried to pivot in 2021 by selling more to grocery stores; however, it wasn't enough to make up for the severe drop in sales.

The company operated on a $12 million loss in 2020, which improved slightly to a $9 million loss for both 2021 and 2022, according to the Accounting Standards Board of Japan filing. However, expenses continued to outstrip revenue, and the label was also contending with increased competition among craft brewing labels and shrinking market share.

The decision to shut down the beer maker came after realizing "it would be difficult to improve profitability in the medium to long term," Oga added.

All four sites in Anchor's San Francisco real estate portfolio are zoned for industrial uses, which the city's planning code defines as PDR, or production, distribution or repair space.

Some of the sites include a nearly 90,000-square-foot property at 501 De Haro St. that has housed the company’s brewing facilities since the late 1980s, according to CoStar data. An adjacent parcel includes a surface parking lot and a roughly 34,000-square-foot building, and across the street, Anchor has its tasting room at 495 De Haro St. as well as another parking lot.

All of Anchor's assets, including the properties, are now in the hands of the third-party liquidator, and spokesman Singer said the process of selling everything off could take “longer than anyone else imagines.”