Stone Brewing’s 2020 CEO search didn’t take a year to complete. In fact, it took less than a month. The Escondido, California-headquartered craft brewery announced today the hiring of former Lagunitas Brewing CEO Maria Stipp as its next CEO.

Athens, Georgia-based Creature Comforts Brewing will become a bi-coastal craft beer brand next year with the construction of a taproom and brewery in downtown Los Angeles, the company announced yesterday. The long-awaited opening of Brooklyn-based Other Half Brewing’s taproom and production facility in Washington, D.C., now has an October 2020 opening date, according to a press release today.

An 805 line extension is coming soon to California. Firestone Walker will start a 60-day test of 805 Cerveza — its first line extension of flagship 805 blonde ale — in early August in three California counties.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom today announced bars, breweries, brewpubs and pubs must cease all indoor on-premise service, as well as outdoor service, unless food is offered.

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.

A little over half a year after media executive John Gallegos took a majority stake in San Diego-based SouthNorte Beer, the brewery is launching its first major advertising campaign and has hired Constellation Brands veteran Breanne Heal as its first vice president of sales and marketing.

Days after Texas and Florida mandated that bars shut down for on-premise consumption, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday ordered an immediate end to on-site sales at bars in seven counties, as well as recommended that eight additional counties take similar action in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

San Diego, California-based AleSmith Brewing’s 25 anniversary celebration was slated to start in late March and continue on through the end of 2020. But those parties were either canceled or postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Russian River Brewing Company’s annual release of Pliny the Younger triple IPA drew visitors from 47 states and 14 countries and generated $5.1 million in economic impact to the local economy, an increase of 22.6% over the 2019 release, according to a study conducted by the Sonoma County Economic Development Board.

As states grapple with reopening for business in face of the COVID-19 pandemic, one Maine brewpub owner opted to defy the reopening plan Gov. Janet Mills laid out last week that orders restaurants to remain shut for on-premise dining until June.

German officials today cancelled the country’s famed Oktoberfest celebration due to concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic. The California Craft Brewers Association — a nonprofit trade group that represents the interests of the state’s craft brewers — announced today the cancellation of its “Craft Beer Summit,” which was scheduled for September 9-12 in Long Beach.

A pair of recent surveys of craft brewery owners in South Carolina and California have revealed the financial pressures the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 have placed on small beer companies. A survey released by the South Carolina Brewers Guild on April 14 showed that 80% of the state’s breweries may be forced to close within the next three months if the current shutdown of on-premise and at-the-brewery sales remain in place.

The Reyes Beer Division has made its third acquisition in California of 2020, reaching an agreement to acquire the assets of Richmond, California-based Bay Area Beverage Company.