Add Tallgrass Brewing to the list of small, regional beer companies struggling to stay afloat amid competition from more than 6,600 craft breweries. The Manhattan, Kansas-based brewery, the largest in the state, has suspended operations and laid off approximately 20 employees, founder Jeff Gill confirmed to Brewbound.

After spending 10 years as the marketing director for Oskar Blues Brewery, and more recently the Canarchy Craft Brewery Collective, media relations guru Chad Melis has struck out on his own. Melis, who was an integral part of the Oskar Blues and Canarchy organizations, acting as a national spokesman and overseeing a team 20 marketing employees, launched ‘Turn it Up Media’ in early August.

Constellation Brands is taking a second hit of Canopy Growth Corporation (TSX: WEED). Less than a year after spending $191 million to acquire a 9.9 percent stake in the Canadian cannabis company, the Corona and Modelo maker today announced it would invest approximately $4 billion to acquire 104.5 million shares of Canopy, raising its stake to about 38 percent.

Constellation Brands is continuing to invest behind an own-premise retail strategy for its Ballast Point brand, yesterday confirming plans to open another California brewpub in 2019. The new Ballast Point location – its eighth in California and the tenth in the U.S. — will be located in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, where the NBA’s Golden State Warriors are building a new stadium.

Drizly co-founder Nick Rellas has stepped down as CEO of the on-demand alcohol delivery company but will maintain a seat on its board, the Boston Globe reported last week. Cory Rellas, who co-founded Drizly with his cousin and had been serving as its chief operating officer, has taken over as CEO. The leadership change came less than a month after Drizly announced the acquisition of Buttery, a competing alcohol delivery service that operated in four cities.

After only being recognized by the Brewers Association (BA) as an official beer style in March, “juicy or hazy IPAs” have already become the most competitive beer category at the upcoming Great American Beer Festival (GABF) competition. In a post on the organization’s website, BA craft beer program director Julia Herz wrote that 414 different hazy IPA entries were received for the September event. Another 292 juicy or hazy pale ales and double IPAs were also submitted for judging at this year’s event, an indication that the “haze craze” is a beer style trend with legs.

Growth for small and independent brewers in the U.S. is “stable” as production at craft beer companies grew 5 percent through the first six months of 2018, according to data from industry trade group the Brewers Association (BA). The nonprofit group today shared its annual mid-year growth figures, noting that there were 6,655 active breweries as of June 30, up from 5,562 a year ago.

In an effort to showcase a more diverse array of drinkers featured in stock imagery, Anheuser-Busch recently released hundreds of royalty-free photos that depict women and minorities enjoying beer produced by four of the company’s U.S. craft breweries. A-B, as part of an “Elevate” initiative aimed at “lifting up the beer category,” partnered with Pexels and Unsplash — websites that offer copyright-free photos – to “capture photos that truly reflect our beer drinking audience,” a spokesperson told Brewbound.

In a conversation with skateboarders Mikey Taylor and Eric Bork, who host the recently launched AVNI Interviews podcast featuring entrepreneurs and influencers, Saint Archer Brewing co-founder Josh Landan opened up about the process of starting, scaling and eventually selling the San Diego-based craft brewery to MillerCoors. Landan, who revealed that he initially raised $2.8 million to launch the brand in 2013, shared a bevy of anecdotes from the days before Saint Archer was established, and elaborated on the circumstances that led to his departure from MillerCoors in the months following the sale.

Bell’s Brewery is marching toward a national distribution footprint. The Michigan-based brewery yesterday announced plans to expand distribution to the craft beer soaked state of Colorado. In a press release, the company said it had signed with six wholesalers for coverage throughout Colorado beginning this fall.

While many of the country’s largest and most established craft breweries struggle to grow sales in 2018, at least one longtime player is bucking category-wide trends. Delaware’s Dogfish Head, which launched in 1995 and was ranked by industry trade group the Brewers Association as the 12th largest U.S. craft brewery in 2017, is on pace to grow about 8 percent this year, brewery co-founder and CEO Sam Calagione told Brewbound.

Boston Beer Company chief marketing officer Jon Potter will depart the country’s second-largest craft brewery at the end of the month, the company disclosed in an SEC filing issued yesterday. Potter, who joined the beer, cider and flavored malt beverage producer in August 2016, is credited with engineering the company’s “Fill Your Glass” advertising campaign that debuted during last year’s Major League Baseball World Series.

Canarchy Craft Brewery Collective has finalized its second deal in as many months, today announcing the acquisition of Los Angeles-based Three Weavers Brewing Company. Specific financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but Three Weavers co-founder Lynne Weaver described the deal with the Fireman Capital-backed brewery rollup as a “strategic partnership” that would put her company in a better position to “weather any possible economic storms.”

Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing has inked another local partnership, this time with Denver Arts & Venues, the city agency responsible for operating the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre. As part of a 3-year deal, the Fort Collins-headquartered New Belgium will become “the official craft brewer of Red Rocks Amphitheatre,” and have an increased presence at the Colorado Convention Center, the Denver Performing Arts Complex and the Bellco Theatre.