San Diego’s renowned Green Flash Brewing Company has been sold, to an Investment Group call WC IPA LLC (presumable short for West Coast IPA, Green Flash’s most widely-known beer).  Green Flash also owns Alpine Beer (since they purchased it in 2014).

Green Flash apparently took on too much debt and has been unable to keep up with the debt payments.  They had recently closed their brewing facility in Virginia Beach (which was only operational for just over a year), as well as their barrel-aging facility Cellar 3 in California.  Brewing will continue at their facility in San Diego.  The Green Flash and Alpine brewing companies themselves will be dissolved, although the brands will be kept alive.

The company’s press release announced a drastic pullback from the national distribution operations.  They will continue to be distributed only in California, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Texas, Utah, and Nebraska (they have planned a brewpub opening in Omaha later this month).

The leadership of the new company will include some legacy Green Flash personnel (including Green Flash founder Mike Hinkley ), and will add in a number of people with significant experience in the craft brew world (most notably Dave Mills, formerly of Crafty brand Ballast Point).   Beyond that, little is known at this point about the new ownership group.

Given the nature of this sale (essentially from a bank holding the brewery in receivership to an ownership group with unspecified status in the brewing industry), we will move both Green Flash and Alpine from Craft to Crafty status.  If more info about the ownership group becomes available, I hope to be able to re-certify both brands as being truly Craft.