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THE LATEST CRAFT BEER BRAND NEWS
Craft Brew Alliance Agrees to Settle Canarchy Appoints New CEO Kona Labeling Dispute Craft Brew Alliance (CBA) has agreed to settle a yearslong class action lawsuit over alleged “false and deceptive advertising” for its Kona Brewing beer brand. In an SEC filing, the publicly traded Portland, Oregonbased craft beer company – which also owns the Widmer Brothers,
Redhook, Omission, Square Mile Cider, Appalachian Mountain Brewery, Wynwood Brewing and Cisco Brewers labels – said it expects to incur costs of about $4.7 million to settle the dispute, which surfaced in early 2017. That amount is inclusive of all legal and administrative fees but does
not represent the total amount CBA will pay to the class, according to Marcus Reed, the company’s general counsel. According to Reed, the nationwide settlement will be open to consumers who purchased Konabranded beer products dating as far back as 2013.
After operating for nearly a year without a CEO, the Canarchy Craft Brewery Collective appointed long-time beer executive Tony Short to its top leadership post. The Fireman Capital-backed brewery consortium – whose brands include Oskar Blues, Cigar City, Deep Ellum, Perrin Brewing, Three Weavers, and Utah Brewers Cooperative (Wasatch and Squatters) – had been without a chief executive since last May, when David Pillsbury exited the company after about six months on the job. At the time, Canarchy promoted chief operating officer Matt Fraser to the role of president. Short brings more than three decades of experience in the beer industry to the role, including serving as president of Major Eagle, one of the largest beer wholesalers in Florida, and working 24 years for Anheuser-Busch, where he served as vice president of business and wholesaler development.
Stone Brewing Unloads Berlin Brewery to BrewDog Stone Brewing’s lofty $30 million Germany brewery experiment – aimed at converting Reinheitsgebot-abiding German drinkers into American craft beer lovers – has come to an end only a few years after it began. In April, the San Diego-
headquartered company, ranked by the Brewers Association as the ninth largest craft beer producer in the U.S., announced the sale of its Berlin brewing facility to Scotland’s BrewDog. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but BrewDog began
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occupying the space on May 1. As part of the acquisition, BrewDog picked up a likenew 100-hectoliter brewhouse, and a 10-hectoliter pilot brewing system. The purchase also included a canning line, bottling line, taproom, and outdoor beer garden.