(Webberville, MI) – With the number of breweries-in-planning now over 1,100, an increasingly common strategy to separate from the pack is to push the idea that what is old is new again.

A former film industry executive, Sushil Tyagi, is forming CraftBev International, Inc. The company’s first project: reviving the Celis brand.

The Lansing State Journal reports that Tyagi made a bit of a splash during Wednesday’s auction of Michigan Brewing Company assets.

“I have been building a brewery with the Celis family,” said Sushil Tyagi, of Craftbev International Inc., who represented the family at the auction. “We’ve already been building the distribution network,” he said. “We’re making all the plans for marketing and branding. This (brand name repurchase) is just the one missing piece.”

Pierre Celis, the man after whom the brand is named, saved the Belgian White style decades ago with Hoegaarden. He later sold the brand to then-Interbrew after the brewery burned down. U.S. interest in the Belgian White style inspired him to create the Celis brand in 1992 while he lived in Austin, Texas.

From there, Celis, who passed away in April of last year, had yet another interesting situation with a big brewery. Per the RealBeer archives:

Miller bought a majority stake in the Celis Brewery in 1995. It purchased the Celis family’s minority interest in the business in April of 2000 and closed the brewery by year’s end.

In 2002, Michigan Brewing bought the brewery and later bought the Celis brand, keeping it alive for the next decade.

And now, the brand comes back full circle to Texas.

The LSJ reports that Wednesday’s auction generated up to an estimated $1 million. Bidspotter, the auction service that the company used, offers no completed listings archive.

A source told BeerPulse that MillerCoors Senior Supply Manager, David Burchett, was in attendance at the auction though there is no confirmation of whether MillerCoors was a winning bidder.