Karbach Brewing Company

Kirin-owned New Belgium Brewing – including the Voodoo Ranger-powered New Belgium brand and Bell’s Brewery – now ranks as the largest non-Brewers Association craft beer family, overtaking Molson Coors’ craft brands, according to data released in the trade organization’s May/June edition of the New Brewer magazine.

Karbach Brewing announced it has signed on with the national nonprofit Soldiers’ Angels to brew a custom recipe, Homefront IPA™, to raise funds to support U.S. service members, veterans, and their families.

Karbach Brewing Co. and the Houston Rockets are announcing their new collaboration beer, Clutch City Lager, is now officially hitting store shelves across Houston.

The Brewers Collective West (BC West) — the western division of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (A-B) craft business unit — will continue to focus on innovation as it transforms into more of a “beverage company” in 2022, Christine Perich, general manager of BC West, detailed to Brewbound.

For the first time since the brewery’s founding in 2011, Houston-based Karbach Brewing Co. is expanding distribution outside of the South with its fan-favorite, Karbach Ranch Water Hard Seltzer. Currently available throughout the state of Texas, Karbach’s Ranch Water will expand distribution to Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, and Tennessee this spring.

Mark Anthony Brands has named former Jimmy John’s CMO John Shea to lead the marketing efforts for the White Claw hard seltzer brand. Shea will assume the role this month, a spokesperson confirmed to Brewbound.

Modern Times has furloughed employees at five of its seven taprooms, the San Diego-headquartered brewery wrote in an email Thursday night. Three breweries in Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Brewers Collective, the craft division of the world’s largest beer manufacturer, have temporarily closed their taprooms after employees tested positive for COVID-19. Sierra Nevada plans to keep its taprooms, gift shops and brewery tours closed for the foreseeable future.

In this week’s edition of Last Call: A New York bill would double the state’s excise tax; the Indiana cold beer sales effort will resume; U.S. cider trade group changes name; Silver Eagle distributes 1 million cases of Karbach beer in Houston; C Squared moves; and Backlash exits taproom.

In this week’s edition of Last Call: Drake and Canopy Growth partner to launch More Life Growth Company; Walmart offers curbside pickup of alcohol in 29 states; JetBlue to offer Truly Hard Seltzer; and more news bites.

The Houston Astros and Houston-based Karbach Brewing Co. have joined forces to bring fans a brand new beer and give back to the Houston community right in time for spring season.

In an effort to showcase a more diverse array of drinkers featured in stock imagery, Anheuser-Busch recently released hundreds of royalty-free photos that depict women and minorities enjoying beer produced by four of the company’s U.S. craft breweries. A-B, as part of an “Elevate” initiative aimed at “lifting up the beer category,” partnered with Pexels and Unsplash — websites that offer copyright-free photos – to “capture photos that truly reflect our beer drinking audience,” a spokesperson told Brewbound.

As heavy rain from Hurricane Harvey continues to fall, causing massive flooding in the Houston area, the local beer industry is in a state of flux.

In a clear win for beer distributors, the Texas Senate yesterday voted 19-10 in favor of a bill that, if signed by Governor Greg Abbott, would require breweries making more than 225,000 barrels annually to repurchase their own product from wholesalers in order to continue selling beer for on-premise consumption at their taprooms.

In Monday’s edition of Press Clips: The Texas House advances taproom bill; Georgia governor signs direct sales bill into law; Miller Lite, Samuel Adams begin work with new ad agencies; and much more.