It seems there’s always another rumor of a top-50 craft brewery sale. Today, Lagunitas made a Reuters headline that suggested the country’s fastest-growing craft brewery is currently exploring “strategic options, including the sale of an equity stake.” Citing “people familiar with the matter,” the news outlet said the company is working with Wells Fargo &… Read more »

How do you stand out from the 94 different beer companies fighting for attention in San Diego’s crowded craft scene? You reach for the hard stuff. Living up to its unofficial “we make what we like to drink” motto, this month Ballast Point will introduce four new, ready-to-drink canned cocktails that feature the company’s distilled spirits, including Three Sheets Rum, Fugu Vodka and Old Grove Gin.

The prominent Pacific Northwest beverage wholesaler Columbia Distributing will expand into California with the acquisition of Mesa Beverage Co., the company announced Friday. Columbia, which, although based in Portland, Ore. is owned by San Francisco family office The Meritage Group, said it would purchase all assets of the 4-million case Santa Rosa, Calif. wholesale

David Logsdon, a lifelong beer industry entrepreneur and the founder of Oregon’s Logsdon Farmhouse Ales, has agreed to sell a significant stake in his brewery to three new partners, Brewbound has learned. Reached by phone, Logsdon said that he and the company’s five additional partners have verbally agreed to a deal that would reshape the company’s current ownership structure.

Staring at IRI’s latest spreadsheet isn’t exactly the most exhilarating way to spend a Thursday afternoon, but it can reveal some pretty interesting nuggets. Take this one, about Not Your Father’s Root Beer (NYFRB): The brand that everyone seems to be talking about, nonstop, is now the 11th best-selling “craft” product in IRI’s multi-outlet and convenience store (MULC) universe (which includes grocery, drug, Wal-Mart, club, dollar, mass-merchandiser and military stores).

When your brewery has experienced double-digit growth for the last 17 consecutive years, you’re bound to field a few offers. So it should come as no surprise, then, that the world’s largest brewery recently tried to arrange a formal sit down with one of craft’s most revered “indie” brewery owners: Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione.

It took more than eight months, but Dogfish Head has finally found its new vice president of sales. The company today announced that Todd Bollig, who most recently spent 16 years with Constellation Brands, will fill the long-vacant position left behind by Adam Lambert, who departed the company last November to pursue a new opportunity with New Holland Brewing.

The U.S. beer industry contributed $253 billion to the American economy and supported 1.75 million jobs in 2014, according to the latest “Beer Serves America” report, jointly commissioned by the Beer Institute and the National Beer Wholesalers Association. Findings from the study, which is released every two years, will be presented to Hill staffers, policy makers and members of the press during a Congressional briefing later this afternoon.

One of Oregon’s top beer distributors is investing behind its portfolio of craft offerings. Oregon City’s General Distributors Inc., a 3 million case-per-year outfit that delivers beer to 11 counties in the greater Portland area, last week announced plans to launch a dedicated “craft & specialty team” that will “position the company for future growth and success.”

Atlanta’s Sweetwater Brewing is reportedly planning to go public. Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, said Sweetwater is “in talks with banks about a stock market flotation that could come later this year and value the company in the hundreds of millions of dollars.” The news comes just one week after SweetWater made two key executive changes.

Anheuser-Busch InBev today announced it has agreed to purchase R. Ippolito Distributing, a 700,000 case A-B wholesaler based in Staten Island, New York. The transaction is expected to “close shortly” and specific terms were not disclosed.

A recent Nielsen survey aimed at “getting inside the minds of craft beer consumers” was outlined during today’s Brewers Association Power Hour conference call. 52 percent of all respondents considered beer a “strong fit” with the description “craft.” That’s compared to just 25 percent for spirits, 20 percent and less than 10 percent for items like coffee, juice, and chocolate.

Elysian Brewing co-founder Dick Cantwell is going to work for the Brewers Association. Less than four months after Cantwell resigned from Anheuser-Busch InBev — the international brewing conglomerate that in January acquired the famed Seattle-based beer company he helped start – the former brewmaster will step in as the organization’s new “quality ambassador.”

North American Breweries (NAB) yesterday announced the permanent closure of its Berkeley, Calif. Pyramid Alehouse, a restaurant and brewery that had been operating in the Oakland suburb since 1997. According to a press statement from NAB, which purchased Pyramid Breweries in 2010 after its tie-up with Magic Hat, the shut down is part of a broader, company-wide strategy focused on consolidating production at its Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash. facilities.