Green Flash Foreclosed and Sold

Wow, that happened fast.  Two weekends ago week Green Flash announced it was scaling back its operations and closing its Virginia Beach brewery, then last Friday it announced it was closing its Cellar 3 barrel aged brewing facility and tasting room, and now this morning it announced that the company has been foreclosed.  According to The Full Pint, Green Flash's lender, Comerica Bank, foreclosed and sold Green Flash and Alpine Beer assets to a Michigan risk management company, WC IPA, LLC.  (I find it strange that the acronym spells out West Coast IPA.)  The West Coaster is out with its article, too.

This is a developing story, but there are a few points that I want to note.  First, Green Flash's financial problems were bigger and further along than its recent announcements indicated.  Banks do not just decide to foreclose and sell assets over the span of a few days.  Today's news was the conclusion to a months' long process.  Second, there is still value in the Green Flash brand, and especially the Alpine brand.  Extinguishing Alpine Beer and its beers would be a shame, verging on a beer crime.

Finally, I expect multiple stories on how Green Flash, craft beer's Icarus, went wrong expanding too fast and flying too close to the sun.  I think Green Flash's demise is simpler.  Over the past week I have popped into multiple restaurants and found no Green Flash beer on tap, with one exception, The Joint in Ocean Beach has Alpine Duet on tap.  I can't remember seeing Green Flash beers on any taps locally in a long time, and seeing Alpine beers is rare.  If Green Flash bungled its local market, the one that supported it for years, how could it expect to distribute nationally?  The lack of Green Flash beers in restaurants and bars lead to its local irrelevance, which played out nationally. 

Update:  This story dominated my twitter feed today.  I want to make clear that Green Flash and Alpine are both still operating.  The bank foreclosure and sale did not mean the breweries' business stopped.  The West Coaster article linked to above has information on the people behind purchase of Green Flash.  I changed the title of this post, too, to avoid any confusion.