After taking on “too much debt” to build an expansive East Coast brewery, San Diego’s Green Flash Brewing today announced that it would cease operations at its 58,000 sq. ft. Virginia Beach production facility and terminate 43 employees in the process. The Virginia Beach brewery, which cost approximately $20 million to build and is capable of being scaled to 100,000 barrels, is currently for sale as part of an online auction run by Heritage Global Partners. Additionally, Green Flash — which also owns the Alpine Beer Company brands — has secured capital from a new but undisclosed investor group.

Sporting venues around the country have been beefing up their craft beer programs in recent years and now Guaranteed Rate Field, home of the Chicago White Sox, is teaming up with one of the city’s most well-known breweries. Chicago’s Revolution Brewing has inked a multi-year deal with the White Sox for increased exposure throughout the ballpark as part of what Donn Bichsel, the brewery’s director of sales, described as an opportunity the company couldn’t pass up.

The Brewers Association has officially recognized hazy New England-style IPAs as a bona fide beer style. In a press release, the trade group today announced changes to its “Beer Style Guidelines,” a reference for brewers and beer competition organizers that includes style descriptions and product specifications. Among the new styles of beer featured in the 2018 guidebook are three cloudier offerings – “Juicy or Hazy Pale Ale,” “Juicy or Hazy IPA” and “Juicy or Hazy Double IPA” — which over the years have become known as New England-style or Northeast IPAs.

The Brewers Association today released its annual rankings of the top 50 U.S. beer companies based on 2017 sales volume estimates. Here’s how things shook out:

Oregon’s Ninkasi Brewing has announced the hiring of former Bell’s Brewery director of sales, Marty Compton. Compton, who officially joined the Eugene-based Ninkasi as its new national sales director earlier this week, departed Bell’s Brewery last August.

First Beverage Group, one of the top dealmaking firms in the beverage industry, today announced that it has spun off its investment banking division and merged the unit with Seattle-based Cascadia Capital’s consumer and retail team. Specific financial terms of the transaction, which closed on March 5, were not disclosed.

The co-founder and chairman of Stone Brewing Company issued a public apology today after an employee with access to the company’s “Arrogant Bastard” Twitter account sent an “inappropriate” tweet on Wednesday. The since-deleted message, sent on the eve of Women’s History Month, contained sexual innuendos that some Twitter users described as “tone deaf” and said promoted rape culture.

Less than a month after Dogfish Head switched distributors in Illinois, the Delaware-based craft brewery has altered its route to market in Massachusetts. Previously distributed by Atlantic Beverage Distributors, the Dogfish Head brands will now be sold throughout Massachusetts by five MillerCoors wholesalers

Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest beer maker, today reported 2017 global revenue growth of 5.1 percent even as its core beer offerings continued to suffer in the U.S. The company’s shipments to retailers declined by 3 percent in the U.S. last year, while sales to wholesalers dipped 3.5 percent. Revenues, meanwhile, declined by 2 percent domestically, despite growth of 1.5 percent on a per hectoliter basis.

After nearly three years at the helm of Uinta Brewing Company, Steve Mills has departed the Utah-based craft brewery for a smaller operation on the East Coast. Mills has been named the CEO of Maine Beer Company, which is best known for producing hop-forward ales packaged in 16.9 oz. glass bottles with white labels.

Yet another U.S. beer company is making cuts to its workforce due to slowing sales of craft beer. New Belgium Brewing Company, and employee-owned business with production facilities in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Asheville, North Carolina, today laid off 28 employees across the production, administration, finance, human resources and IT departments.

Seven months after announcing plans to create a national sales platform via investments in San Francisco’s 21st Amendment and Colorado’s Funkwerks, Brooklyn Brewery is readying for what it hopes will be a year of growth across all three brands. Speaking to Brewbound, Dave Duffy, Brooklyn’s vice president of business development, said the three companies have officially integrated their sales forces and “cross-trained on each other’s brands.”

Massachusetts’ Wachusett Brewing has partnered with former Guinness brewmaster Fergal Murray to kick off a new set of collaboration brews that the company has dubbed the “1794 series.” Set to debut on February 23, “The Fergal Project” is a 4.5 percent stout that combines Irish malts with the same American hops used in Wachusett’s “Wally” New England IPA.

After taking on a “considerable amount of debt” to build a $20 million secondary production facility in Virginia Beach in 2015, Green Flash Brewing founder and CEO Mike Hinkley is on the hunt for new investment. The San Diego-based craft brewery has retained SSG Capital Advisors — a boutique investment banking firm that specializes in mergers, acquisitions, restructurings and often works with “companies facing complex or challenging situations,” according to its website – to help it bring on a new partner.