This morning Victory Brewing Company broke news to their employees that they will unite with Southern Tier Brewing Company under the holding company Artisanal Brewing Ventures (ABV), creating “one of the largest brewers in the Northeast.”

We’ve gathered two general observations of the craft industry ever since Constellation purchased Ballast Point for a billion dollars last year. These two observations may not have spawned directly from the Ballast Point acquisition, but they’ve been apparent ever since.

After launching their inquiry into pay-to-play activity a little over a year ago, the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission has finally issued their first punishment and it’s a doozy.

MillerCoors reported their fourth quarter and year-end earnings earlier this morning and its craft division, Tenth & Blake, finished the year off with low-single digit growth, despite declines in the closing quarter.

The first set of IRI data for 2016 is in and craft’s numbers are good, not great. The latest IRI data to January 24 reveals craft dollars to be up 13.6% YTD in multi-outlet convenience. Recall, craft dollars were up 23.4% YTD on the last set of IRI data to December 27.

The playbook for “The High End” at Anheuser-Busch has been an alluring topic in the industry for the past year or two. Everybody wants a peek at it. So this year we got Felipe Szpigel, vice president at The High End, up on stage at our Beer Summit to try and give you a glimpse into the highly-acquisitive division.

Bryant Goulding billed 2015 as “one heck of a year,” and it’s hard to argue with the Rhinegeist Brewery chief. The Cincinnati-based brewery nearly tripled sales over the past year without any significant territorial expansion and they’re on their way to becoming a self-distributing powerhouse – nearly 80% of their beer was self distributed this past year.

Craft Brew Alliance issued Q4 and year-end preliminary results yesterday, plus a look into 2016. The highlights:

Founders has come a long way since it was originally called Canal Street Brewing Company back in 1996. Recall that two years ago Founders sold a 30% stake to Spanish brewery San Miguel after announcing a $30 million expansion project. The brewery ended 2015 at 269,701 bbl shipped, up 40% from 2014.

CBD had the opportunity to sit down with Buffalo Wild Wing’s Patrick Kirk, their Director of Beverage Innovation, at our Beer Summit and talk about some of the trends he’s seeing in the category. Of course BWW is the largest on-premise beer retailer in the country, so Patrick is kinda a big deal. Let’s listen in (excerpted):

We took the morning browsing Bump Williams’ (of Bump Williams Consulting) monthly client letter and found some interesting sound bites that may interest craft beer marketers. First, the obvious: Craft deals ain’t done, not by a long shot.

We started off the Beer Summit this year with a California craft panel which included Meg Gill from Golden Road (which recently sold to A-B), David Walker of Firestone Walker (which recently partnered to Duvel Moortgat), and the always entertaining Tony Magee of Lagunitas (which recently sold a 50% stake to Heineken NV). Each had a unique perspective on some of the issues of the day. Let’s listen in.

Yesterday, CBD filled you in on Short’s Brewing’s plans to sell beer outside the state of Michigan for the first time ever. Now, a little more color has emerged on where they’re heading out-of-state.

CBD has learned that current VP of sales for New Holland Brewing, Adam Lambert, is leaving the company at the end of this month to pursue an opportunity with Virtue Cider where he will assume the same position.

SweetWater Brewing Co. has hired Paul “PK” Kirbabas to be in charge “of all of its commercial (sales and marketing) operations,” effective February 29, according to company spokesperson Tucker Berta Sarkisian.