After a near three-year legal battle, a federal judge has ruled that the founder of a prominent craft beer distributorship in Kentucky owes her cousin, who helped build the business, more than $1 million from the sale of the company. According to a report from Cincinnati.com, U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Gregory Wehrman ruled that Mary Kenney improperly sold the business, Beer House Distributors, to L. Knife & Son in 2011 without first consulting Charles Sisson, her cousin and the company’s only other shareholder.
Another top five craft brewery has found itself embroiled in a trademark dispute. New Belgium Brewing, the country’s fourth-largest craft brewery, recently rolled out its latest year-round offering, Slow Ride Session IPA, without — the brewery says — knowledge that a startup based in Austin, Texas, had recently begun producing a pale ale under the same name.
Brewbound is pleased to announce its first group of speakers for the upcoming Brew Talks meetup, happening on Feb. 24 at the Harpoon Beer Hall in Boston. With merger and acquisition activity continuing to pick up in the craft sector, succession planning is becoming a much more important topic. Should companies stay the course, sell, and how should they consider the next generation of ownership while making those decisions?
As both a wink at the past and a nod to the future, Avery Brewing will release “Tectum et Elix” this year which, translated, means “Roofs and Drains.” For 22 years, the brewery has operated out of a disjointed 18,000 sq. ft. facility in a Boulder, Colo. alleyway that lacks proper brewing amenities and has made scaling production nearly impossible.
Diageo, the world’s largest spirits producer and maker of popular import beers like Guinness and Red Stripe, is finally making its foray into craft with the launch of Thump Keg Brewing Co. The spirits-minded beer brand is intended to offer consumers a range of styles brewed using the same base ingredients as its distillery counterparts.
Having reached the 50,000-barrel threshold in just its fourth year of operation, Chicago’s Revolution Brewing is preparing to dig deeper in its home market by expanding its production facility and tripling capacity. Backed by bank and small business loans, the brewery has announced plans to install a 120-barrel brewhouse and several 800-barrel fermenters this summer — boosting capacity to 300,000 barrels — as the company expands into a neighboring space in its current building.
There are two types of malt beverages in Iowa: there’s “beer,” which is defined by the Alcoholic Beverages Division as a product that does not exceed 6.25 percent alcohol by volume (ABV). And then there’s “high alcoholic content beer,” which the state currently defines as malt beverages ranging between 6.25 percent ABV and 15 percent ABV.
Atwater Brewery has some major expansion plans on tap, as the company is building out its staff at its Detroit headquarters while ramping up to build two new facilities in other parts of the country. According to ModeledMedia.com, Atwater is still planning to build a brewery in Austin, Texas, a $15 million project that was first announced last February.
Millercoors today announced that its 56-year-old CEO, Tom Long, plans to retire this summer. His last day with the country’s second-largest beer company will be June 30.
A proposed bill aimed at easing regulations on Arizona breweries earned an early victory on Monday when it passed out of a Senate committee. Senate Bill (SB) 1030, dubbed the “Arizona Beer Bill”, passed in the Senate Commerce Committee Monday with a 6-2 vote. The proposal? Allow Arizona brewers to maintain their additional brewing, restaurant and retail locations once production volumes exceed 40,000 barrels.
There’s a growing sense of optimism amongst Florida brewers who believe 2015 could be the year 64 oz. growlers are finally legalized. Brewers are hopeful that a recently tabled bill will survive opposition from wholesalers who are okay with growlers, but have hangups pertaining to language in the proposed bill regarding brewery retail rights.
Craft Brew Alliance (CBA) has announced its preliminary financial results for 2014, highlighting double-digit net sales growth across the company’s core family of brands including Kona, Widmer Brothers, Redhook and Omission. According to a release from the company, net sales increased 12 percent in 2014, and exceeded $200 million. Shipments grew 10 percent, a 6 percent increase over the year prior. Depletions, meanwhile, grew 7 percent despite an approximate 25 percent reduction in SKUs.
San Francisco’s 21st Amendment Brewery has announced plans to expand distribution to Chicago this spring, sales director Ted Whitney told Brewbound. “We’ll be sitting down to plan the launch in the next few weeks and we expect this to be an epic beer landing,” he said. The company is currently in the process of finalizing its wholesaler partnerships, though it would not specify what distributors it’s teaming up with.
U.S. Rep Steve Womack (R-Ark.) yesterday introduced the latest version of a Beer Institute-backed bill that would lower excise taxes on all brewers and beer importers. The bipartisan Fair Brewers Excise and Economic Relief Act (Fair BEER Act), which was introduced into the House of Representatives this morning, is co-sponsored by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and differs from previous bills by creating a new scaled tax structure that would lower the per barrel tax rate for all brewers and importers of all sizes.
