For a couple days in January, Santa Rosa had been known to host RateBeer Best, a high-profile lineup of brewers of unparalleled talent, generating tourism money for the city in the process.

Unfortunately, those days may be over.

In 2016 and 2017, brewers came from all over the world — Brazil, the U.K., Belgium, Sweden, and all corners of the U.S. — to RateBeer Best, RateBeer's beer festival and live annual awards ceremony. Top-ranking breweries received medals for brews that earned higher ratings from RateBeer's site users than any other breweries in their states and countries. It was also an occasion for beer fans to visit the North Bay city to sample offerings from a number of the best breweries in the world.

"This [fest] lineup is the best all-around," said Medford Howell, a bartender at Russian River Brewing Company, at the awards ceremony in January.

RELATED: RateBeer ranks Russian River, Moonraker and other NorCal brewers among best in world

But things have changed since then. Joe Tucker, RateBeer's executive director, moved to Oregon in April, and a few months later, news broke that ZX Ventures, a "global incubator" arm of Anheuser-Busch InBev, purchased a minority stake in the beer ratings website.

As with other acquisitions by AB InBev, there was immediate blowback. Sam Calagione, the influential founder of Dogfish Head, requested that Tucker remove all ratings of their beer from the site, claiming the site's ownership now had a conflict of interest. Other breweries followed suit.

Now, perhaps due to both major changes, Tucker and RateBeer won't be holding the festival in Santa Rosa this January. Rather, editors will post the names of the winners on the site. And though Tucker won't rule out the possibility of the festival's return to the North Bay in future years, there's no plan to bring it back either.

That may be a loss for the city of Santa Rosa. Tucker estimates that RateBeer Best earned around $2 million in 2017 — much of which went to charity — but was a real positive financial impact for local hotels and restaurants in what's typically their offseason.

"There are more beer festivals than you can count in the Bay," says Brad Calkins, executive director of Visit Santa Rosa. "We really look for one that's going to bring in the outside visitor. That's what we loved about RateBeer (Best). People came from St. Louis, Belgium, Boston, wherever."

Citing influential breweries like Hill Farmstead and others in Belgium, Calkins notes that RateBeer Best has the name recognition to draw in quality brewers and with them, their fans around California.

"It brought in such quality brewers that someone from Sacramento or Los Angeles would travel to and spend the night in Santa Rosa to try those beers," he adds.

But with AB InBev's involvement in RateBeer's endeavors, Tucker worries that craft beer loyalists in the U.S. may be wary of buying a ticket to the famed festival, even if the event benefits charities.

"I don't want there to be an opportunity for there to be an issue with regular (site) users or people out in the community," Tucker says. "The broader beer community is where there is some kind of stink we'd have to spend hours managing. We're still a tiny company. I don't enjoy dedicating hours to address public blowouts."

As a result, Tucker might take the RateBeer Best festival overseas, "where we wouldn't run into the PR issue."

"There are certainly places in Europe that would jump on an opportunity like this, but it's far before any planning," he adds.

In the meantime, in the wake of devastating fires from which the local tourism industry is still trying to recover, Santa Rosa is considering what to do next. The city doesn't have the manpower to plan another beer festival on its own, Calkins notes, so they're hoping to partner with another group to create a new beer festival tradition in town.

"We don't have the staff capacity to organize and that's where we enjoyed RateBeer, because Joe brought the name recognition and Mark (Lagris, the event organizer) brought the expertise," he says. "We brought the marketing behind some of that."

For now, the city is in "preliminary discussions" with a number of local beer retailers and other companies who may be willing to come together to build a new festival.

"There are quite a few ideas out there," Calkins adds, "but nothing in the details."

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.

