GRAND RAPIDS — After more than three and a half years in business, Gray Skies Distillery LLC has rebranded as Eastern Kille Distillery, effective immediately, to coincide with the first statewide launch of the company’s bourbon. 

Traditional, outdoor agriculture is profoundly dependent on climate, but high-tech indoor farms that grow premium, hyper-local produce for consumers year round may be commercially viable in the future.

WYOMING — Gordon Food Service Inc. hopes to expand into Indiana with a proposed new distribution center. 

SAWYER — A Southwest Michigan brewery is expanding with a new location in Indiana in partnership with a SpartanNash Co.-owned grocery store. 

LANSING — Medical marijuana provider Green Peak Innovations LLC closed on $10 million in mezzanine financing to support expansion in Michigan and elsewhere.

KALAMAZOO — In the four years since Kalamazoo Valley Community College launched its sustainable brewing program, it could use student-made beers for tastings and instructional purposes, but not offer it for sale in its on-campus full-service restaurant. 

Agricultural land values have remained relatively stable throughout most regions in Michigan, even though many farmers continue to face serious headwinds. 

Despite a historically cold spring, a year-over-year decline in acreage and new outbreaks of pests, some local growers of hops are reporting record-breaking harvests. 

Working under the hot summer sun, Ricardo Martinez and Yolanda Garrido concentrated on meeting their quota. They lost track of the hours, but bucket-by-bucket, seven days a week, they picked blueberries at a farm in Southwest Michigan. 

Brien Fox moved into the chairmanship at the Lansing-based Michigan Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association as the craft brewing industry in Michigan continues to gain in popularity. The CEO of the family-owned Henry A. Fox Sales Co. in Kentwood was elected to a two-year term as chairman on July 31 during the annual meeting of the association, which represents nearly 50 beer and wine distributors across Michigan that employ about 6,000 people. He spoke with MiBiz about his role and the state’s beer and wine industry.

GRAND RAPIDS — Founders Brewing Co. is selling a majority stake in the business to the brewery’s Spain-based minority shareholder, MiBiz has learned. 

The company Confident Cannabis was launched less than four years ago by four Stanford Business School alums. Today, 50 percent of the legal cannabis produced in the U.S. across 25 states passes through the Palo Alto, Calif-based company’s lab-testing platform, which allows business-to-business buying and selling of cannabis.

SpartanNash Co.’s present chairman and former CEO, Dennis Eidson, returned to running the company today following the abrupt resignation of President and CEO David Staples amid an expected quarterly loss.

When Michigan voters legalized medical marijuana more than a decade ago, advocates hailed it as a landslide victory for patients. 

Officials in Muskegon and Holland say they’re responding to voters as they take disparate approaches to medical marijuana businesses.

GRAND RAPIDS — Tensions between Michigan craft beverage producers and the state regulatory agency appear to be ratcheting up with the filing of a new federal lawsuit, MiBiz has learned. 

Time has run out for about 10 percent of crops in the state, as Michigan farmers face delays related to one of the wettest spring seasons on record. 

LANSING — Michigan lawmakers are allocating $15 million to a low-interest loan program to help farmers wrestling with crop losses associated with historic rainfall this spring.

Here is a roundup of recent West Michigan craft beverage business news compiled by MiBiz.

GRAND RAPIDS — In the restaurant business, nothing can mess up a night like the broiler breaking down just before the dinner hour on a busy weekend. Or the ice machine in the bar going down. Or the walk-in cooler or freezer failing. Or the kitchen ventilation system malfunctioning. Those are situations that Daniel Estrada and Joe Gallagher believe their startup company can help to fix and avoid.

According to Nielsen data supplied by the United States Association of Cider Makers, the cider beverage category continues to expand, with off-premise sales up 9.4 percent in the third quarter of 2018 versus the prior year. Customers also are buying local: Regional cider sales are growing four times as fast as national cider brands.

ALPINE TOWNSHIP — Dunneback Fruit Farm LLC aims to offer customers something new in addition to the fruits and vegetables grown at the multi-generational family farm. The business will use fruits, hops and other products from the farming operation to make beer, wine and cider and serve them in an on-site tasting room at 3025 6 Mile Road NW.

As more generations become exposed over time to the craft beer industry, brewers will face new opportunities to find growth and challenges to their existing business models. Add in a healthy dose of regulatory uncertainty and shifting market dynamics that could easily catch breweries off guard financially if they scaled up too large, too soon and it’s easy to see that the craft brewing industry remains in a state of constant flux.

Although Michigan has earned a spot among the nation’s top producers of hops after a growth spurt in the last five years, 2018 served as a moment of reckoning for the state’s growers, whose overall acreage declined. The state remains the fourth-largest cultivator of hops, although still lags well behind the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., where almost 96 percent of the nearly 58,000 acres of hops are grown in the country.

Michigan is “a natural fit” for industrial hemp production, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Thursday as the state launched an industrial hemp pilot program for the 2019 planting season. The new program allows for the growth, cultivation and marketing of Michigan grown industrial hemp.

Founders Brewing Co. has partnered with its Spanish investors to acquire a majority stake in a Colorado-based craft brewer.

Battle Creek-based Kellogg Co. is selling off Keebler, Famous Amos and other snack brands in a move to reshape it product portfolio.

Succession planning can be an emotionally-charged family affair for businesses in any industry. That’s especially true for all sizes of family-owned farms, which make up more than 97 percent of the industry nationally, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

When Chico, Calif.-based Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. put out the “bat signal” seeking help to support victims of last year’s catastrophic Camp Fire in northern California, the Michigan craft brewing industry set into motion. Their rallying point: Resilience Butte County Proud IPA. Sierra Nevada created the beer as a fundraiser, pledging to donate 100 percent of its profits from the sale of the product to the Camp Fire Relief Fund. The 10th-largest U.S. brewery then shared the recipe online and encouraged breweries all over the country to participate.

LITCHFIELD — Proposed commercial-scale maltster Independent Barley & Malt Inc. has signed an exclusive supplier agreement with Maumee, Ohio-based The Andersons Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, Litchfield-based Independent Barley & Malt will use The Andersons (Nasdaq: ANDE) to source, supply, deliver and store the malting barley it will use in its operations.

GRAND RAPIDS — A federal judge has ordered the financially-embattled Boersen Farms Inc., related entity Boersen Farms AG LLC, and its owners to pay nearly $14.9 million to Tennessee-based Helena Agri-Enterprises, LLC for unpaid debts.