Craft Brewing and Distilling News for August 4, 2016

•Providence, Rhode Island’s Narragansett Beer has launched Hi-Neighbor! Have a Hefeweizen!, the latest entry in the brewer’s collaborative Hi Neighbor Mash-Up series. Created in partnership with Rhode Island-based game company Bananagrams Inc., Hi Neighbor! Have a Hefeweizen! is brewed with 40% wheat malt—which is left unfiltered to create notes of banana and clove—and El Dorado hops. The limited edition entry will be available in six packs of 16-ounce cans (around $10) and distributed throughout New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Washington D.C., Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Virginia, as well as Portland, Oregon, and Nashville and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

•Chico, California’s Sierra Nevada Brewing Company has named Jeff White as the company’s first chief operating officer. A 30-year veteran of the brewing industry, White had previously served as the systems integration director since joining the company in 2013 after stints at MillerCoors’s Tenth and Blake division and Boston Beer Company, where he held the title of COO. Sierra Nevada was ranked as the third-largest craft brewer last year in the U.S., according to the Brewer Association.

•Vice District Brewing, a two-year-old microbrewery on Chicago’s south side, is expanding to south suburban Homewood, Illinois, to open a second brewery and taproom. The company, which will produce about 800 barrels this year from its current 15-barrel brewhouse, hopes to open the new facility by year-end with a projected 4,000 barrels of annual production slated for 2017 and sufficient capacity to boost that total to 10,000 barrels eventually. The Homewood taproom will have seating for 75. Vice District co-owners Quintin Cole and Curtis Tarver II say the move became necessary when their signature Pleasure Trip blonde ale and Bad Intentions American IPA, among other labels, were in short supply. Vice District’s production has been limited to draft beers, but the owners hope to add a bottling or canning line in Homewood.

Tagged : Bananagrams Inc, Boston Beer Co, MillerCoors, Narragansett Beer, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Vice District Brewing

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