Craft Beer News Roundup: Green Flash, Sierra Nevada, Moon River and Four Peaks / Danny Williams

We comin’ at ya with a very western edition of Craft Beer News Roundup. Read about Green Flash Brewing, Sierra Nevada Brewing, Moon River Brewing as well as Four Peaks Brewing’s tribute to the late Danny Williams. Cheers!

Green Flash –  In response to a Facebook Fan’s question about the return of Palate Wrecker : “Yes! Palate Wrecker will be released in bottles as a seasonal… look out for it in Spring 2012!” Until now, this has only been on draft in the San Diego area.

Sierra Nevada – 2012 Bigfoot was released from the brewery this week! It’s making its way across the country right now – keep your eyes peeled for it!

Moon River Brewing – In 2011, Moon River Brewing used 75,265 pounds of malt and 925 pounds of hops to make 1,253 barrels of beer. Our fans consumed 840 barrels at the restaurant.

Four Peaks Brewing –  From their latest emailer: I don’t know if you know but a good friend of the brewery and a good friend of the industry died on Monday.  His name was Danny Williams, or “D-Dub” as he was known to the brewers.  He was the Competition Beer Organizer for both the GABF and the WBC and he was just a good guy.  He was the one that would let us enter beers late or let us switch categories when they were full.  Kind of a no-no at the GABF, but Danny liked Four Peaks a lot.

Since he was in charge of all the beers at the competitions he was able to snag the full bottles that were not judged and keep them for himself (nice gig).  We would often find Danny at the hospitality rooms at the hotels and he would inevitably go into a back room and emerge with bottle of Hopsquatch that he had squirreled away.  “I love this s#!+, man”, he would say.

He died of pancreatic cancer that came on pretty quick.  This after losing a portion of his house to a wildfire, and later, another portion due to the flooding brought about by the ash.  He wrote a farewell letter last week and at the end he asked his friends in the industry, if they could, to please help out his son, Fletcher.  Danny left a lot of debt but asked his son to keep the house at all costs.  It’s actually an old gold mine where he turned a portion of the shaft into a beer cellar.  It was once featured in the New York Times.

So we decided to name our new Porter the D-Dub Porter in his honor and will be donating a portion of the sales to help out his son, Fletcher.  Below is the description of our latest Seasonal selection that will bear his name, what we originally referred to as our Four Grain Porter.