Brewbound — Craft Beer News, Events & Jobs

Brian “BK” Krueger will join the Boulder, Colorado-headquartered company as director of sales and marketing. Krueger, who has plenty of experience in the Colorado market after a 16-year career as sales executive with New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, will fill the role being left by Dustin LeMoine, who the company is promoting to Chief Operating Officer, effective immediately.

New data from market research firm Nielsen confirms what many beer executives have long feared: The beer category is continuing to cede sales to wine and spirits. On-premise volume sales of beer over the 52-week period ending June 17 were down more than 2 percent, according to a new Nielsen report outlining the latest beverage alcohol trends.

In the latest Press Clips: Magnolia founder discusses brewery sale; Stone’s Berlin business profiled; Modern Times inches closer to Encinitas taproom; Guinness hires head brewer for Maryland facility; and more.

A handful of notable craft brewery expansions aimed at expanding the availability of small-batch offerings from companies based in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Wisconsin are moving forward.

Nearly a year after launching its “Equity for Punks” USA crowdfunding scheme, Scottish craft beer company BrewDog PLC has announced that it raised $7 million, falling considerably short of a stated $50 million target.

In an effort to find a different use for spent grain — a byproduct of the beer brewing process – Anheuser-Busch InBev, via its ZX Ventures ‘global disruptive growth group,’ has backed a non-alcoholic beverage startup hoping to turn leftover malt into a drinkable product. A-B is hoping that a proprietary fermentation process, developed internally, can transform at least some of the nearly 8 billion pounds of spent grain produced across the beer industry each year into an isolate that will be used in a new line of plant-based barley beverages called “Canvas.”

Four craft breweries have shuttered in less than two weeks, the most well-known of which, Rubicon Brewing Company, had operated in Sacramento for nearly 30 years.

Constellation Brands has acquired fast-growing Florida-based craft beer producer Funky Buddha and, in the process, formed a new “High End Craft and Specialty” business group specifically tasked with overseeing the company’s present and future craft brewery purchases. Financial terms of the deal, which closed yesterday, were not disclosed. The structure is similar to Constellation’s 2015 purchase of San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewing, which was worth $1 billion, Brewbound understands. A sale price was not disclosed, but the all-cash deal is for 100 percent of the company, according to KC Sentz, who co-founded the brewery with his brother Ryan Sentz.

A group led by New Belgium Brewing Company today announced it would acquire San Francisco-based Magnolia Brewing Company as part of a bankruptcy proceeding.

Constellation Brands today announced the acquisition of Florida-based Funky Buddha Brewery. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In this week’s distribution roundup: Revolution Brewing expands to Michigan, Boulevard switches wholesalers in Idaho and Dovetail Brewery hits Indiana.

New Hampshire-based Iron Heart Mobile Canning will expand its presence in the south with the acquisition of Nashville’s Toucan Mobile Canning LLC.

At the Startup Brewery Challenge in June, L.A. McCrae, the founder of North Carolina’s Black Star Line Brewing, took the stage to deliver a passionate, three-minute pitch about a brewery, for certain, but also something more. “Black Star Line Brewing Company is a grassroots, family-centered brewery launching a social movement,” McCrae said at the time.

Japan’s Sapporo Holdings Ltd. announced last Thursday that it would acquire craft brewing pioneer Anchor Brewing Company for a provisional $85 million sum. In his first interview since the deal was announced, Keith Greggor, the owner and CEO of Anchor Brewers & Distillers, the brewery’s parent company, spoke to Brewbound about the circumstances that led to the sale, the current state of craft M&A and his plans for Anchor Distilling.