[Ryan16]

Recent Headlines: March 8, 2011 (Compiled by the Brewers Association)

Food>>
Dry Stout Shepherd's Pie - http://www.craftbeer.com/pages/beer-and-food/recipes/recipes-list/show?title=dry-stout-shepherds-pie - craftbeer.com
Dry Stout serves as the perfect backbone for this Shepherd's Pie from The Hungry Housewife. Celebrate St. Patrick's Day and Dry Stout, a favorite spring seasonal, with this recipe.

Brew 'n' stew: How to cook with beer - http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/food/3872846-423/brew-n-stew-how-to-cook-with-beer.html - suntimes.com
Beer has always done a good job of washing down certain comfort foods. But cooking with beer? That's a different story. "Beer is tricky," says Michelle Foik, general manager at Revolution Brewing, 2323 N. Milwaukee in Logan Square. "You really can't cook a lot with hoppy beers. If you reduce the beer during the cooking process, it gets closer to its natural state of hops, which is bitter."

Celebrate Fat Tuesday! New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp - http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41955287/ns/today-food - today.msnbc.msn.com
Celebrate Fat Tuesday! Chef Haley Bittermann, corporate executive chef for the Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group, shares tasty recipes for barbecue shrimp and double chocolate bread pudding from "Ralph Brennan's New Orleans Seafood Cookbook."

Events>>
Celebrate Mardi Gras with Abita Brewing Company - http://www.craftbeer.com/pages/stories/featured-brewery/show?title=celebrate-mardi-gras-with-abita-brewing-company - craftbeer.com
Fat Tuesday, the crown jewel of Carnival season, is finally here. Most famously celebrated in the U.S. by the city of New Orleans, the holiday serves as a final day of celebration before the beginning of Lent. With visions of king cake and crawfish etouffee dancing in our heads, we're celebrating by sharing some background and a video about Abita Brewing Company.  Located just 30 miles from New Orleans, their first seasonal of the year is of course dedicated to Carnival, the Abita Mardi Gras Bock.

Lifestyle>>
The Great Coors Craft Beer Taste Off - http://www.denvermagazine.com/Blogs/The-Mouthful/February-2011/The-Great-Coors-Craft-Beer-Taste-Off/ - denvermagazine.com
What do AC Golden Brewing Co.'s Colorado Native, Blue Moon Brewing Co.'s Spring Blonde Wheat, and Batch 19 have in common? If you guessed MillerCoors, you know your beer trivia. The brewing magnate with roots in Golden has ratcheted up its small-batch brewing operation (check out David Port's article in the March issue) in recent years, producing a bevy of unique offerings that don't look a thing like the Silver Bullet, which got us wondering just how well these beers stacked up, taste-wise, against the stiff competition from Colorado's craft beer industry. We enlisted the help of five Front Range chefs who pull double duty as homebrewers to help us figure out just how close Coors has come in quality during a five-flight blind tasting on Wednesday. Turns out, the gap is getting narrow.

Shattering Beer's Glass Ceiling: The Rise of Women Brewers - http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/03/shattering-beers-glass-ceiling-the-rise-of-women-brewers/72156 - theatlantic.com
Last month employees from three breweries met in Cambridge, Massachusetts to cook up a beer. That's nothing special: these days any brewery worth its hops is involved in at least one collaboration project. What made this brew session notable were the people involved: Cambridge Brewing's Megan Parisi, Victory Brewing's Whitney Thompson, and Stone Brewing's Laura Ulrich-three women working in an industry long defined as the manliest of male domains. Women have been a part of the craft beer renaissance since its beginnings in the 1980s-most notably Carol Stoudt, who founded and still helps run Stoudt's Brewing Co. in Adamstown, Pennsylvania. But it's only in the last decade that women have gone from being a novelty presence to a regular sight on the brewery floor. And it's only in the last few years that they've been building a collective identity as women brewers, and not just "one of the boys."

Government Affairs>>
Samuel Adams hopes to put end to SanTan glass - http://beernews.org/2011/03/samuel-adams-hopes-to-put-end-to-santan-glass/ - beernews.org (Video)
More craft beer legal battles... Boston Beer Co. is going after SanTan Brewing for allegedly copying the design of its special glass. Boston Beer Corp. says Peter Sciacca, a glass importer, and Anthony Canecchia, owner of SanTan Brewing Co., are infringing on its patents. Boston Beer has asked the International Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., to halt the importation and sale of the di Sciacca heavy-base Pilsner glass, saying it's too similar to the Samuel Adams Boston lager glass. Though the glasses appear to look pretty similar, Sciacca's attorney says that BBC's patents protect the functionality, not the design. Michael Gerity of Phoenix, Sciacca's intellectual-property attorney, said Samuel Adams has only design patents, not a utility patent. He said its design patents, which cover only ornamental features, are invalid.

House reviews 3.2 beer change - http://www.denverpost.com/legislature/ci_17561135 - denverpost.com
Days after Gov. John Hickenlooper's sudden reversal of a regulation affecting the sale of low-strength beer, lawmakers are convening a special hearing to determine why the change was made. Rep. Larry Liston, R-Colorado Springs, chairman of the House Economic and Business Development Committee, and Rep. Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, chairman of the House Finance Committee, will hold a rare joint hearing of their committees today. Liston said lawmakers want to understand how the rule change occurred and for what purpose.

Will Excise Tax On Small Breweries Dry Up? - http://www.wkbw.com/news/local/Will-Excise-Tax-On-Small-Breweries-Dry-Up-117548123.html - wkbw.com
Beer Industry Supports Nearly 60,000 Jobs In NY – Cutting Taxes On 65 Small Brewing Operations Will Allow Small Breweries Across New York State To Hire More Employees, Expand Their Business. Schumer: Bill Will Help Breweries Create Jobs, Revitalize Downtown Communities

Baltimore Sun editorial throws its might behind wine shipping - http://blog.pennlive.com/wine/2011/03/baltimore_sun_editorial_throws_its_might_behind_wine_shipping.html - blog.pennlive.com
The Baltimore Sun editorial board made clear Monday what side of the wine-shipping debate it's on. A member of the group Marylanders for Better Beer & Wine Laws couldn't have expressed his/her views any better than Monday's editorial in support of the proposed legislation that also took to task the opponents and lobbyists for trying to cripple the bill. It finished with this: Legislators need to refrain from their usual inclination to cut backroom deals, appease those with political clout or "go slow" with policy changes. Instead, they ought to act in the interests of their constituents and allow Maryland consumers a chance to buy directly from wineries and retailers and have it shipped to their door, as wine drinkers in the vast majority of states can already."

Business>>
Jackalope Brewing Company - http://www.craftbeer.com/pages/stories/featured-brewery/show?title=jackalope-brewing-company - craftbeer.com
What do you get when you mix a lawyer with a passion for beer, a business woman, a brew kettle, and a rabbit with antlers together in Music City? Jackalope Brewing Company of course! Bailey Spaulding and Robin Virball, who met seven years ago while studying abroad at St. Andrews in Scotland, are in the final stages of preparation to open Tennessee's first completely female-run brewery.