Barrels

SmithKline Beckman Corp.'s initial public offering of 5 million shares of stock in its Beckman Instruments Inc. subsidiary will be priced at about $19 a share, a source at Goldman Sachs & Co. told Dow Jones Professional Investor Report yesterday. That price, which would bring in $95 million, is below the price of $20 to $23 a share that SmithKline anticipated in its initial prospectus. The stock offering, underwritten by a syndicate led by Goldman Sachs, represents about 17 percent of Beckman's 29 million shares.

The mere mention of a truffled beer is enough to incite shudders and raised eyebrows. Even accomplished brewer Scott Morrison conceded that the "terrible" task of melding such a powerful savory flavor with beer brought trepidation: "How am I going to pull this off?" But with his recent return to Dock Street Brewing Co., he knew this first of several planned seasonal collaborations with the Four Seasons Hotel had to be ambitious. So Morrison didn't hold back, crafting a sturdily malted English strong ale, then sending it off to the hotel to be aged in used chardonnay barrels, after which it was blended with a measured dose of truffle-steeped vodka.

Don't try to buy a taiko from Stanley Kaneshiki. He makes them, but he doesn't sell them. The word taiko means "large drum" (or drums: Japanese nouns are plural and singular). Kaneshiki makes them for Hoh Daiko, the drum ensemble based in Seabrook, N.J., that is scheduled to perform next weekend at the Annenberg Center. I met Kaneshiki at the Buddhist temple in Seabrook, where the group practices. Kaneshiki, a soft-spoken man in his mid-60s, with slate-gray hair, described how he goes about making these exotic instruments.

The 1980s have not been kind to America's oldest operating distillery, deep in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country. Bankruptcy almost killed off Michter's Distillery, as even Prohibition had failed to do. A mortgage company ran things, and the sale of whiskey bottles dwindled to a trickle, except on Sundays and odd holidays such as Election Day and Veterans Day when the state liquor stores are closed and Michter's is the only place in the...

New music director a marked man As I read Peter Dobrin's articles on the search for a new music director for the Philadelphia Orchestra, I came to think I would feel sorry for whomever is chosen, if it wasn't Vladimir Jurowski. That impression was reinforced with Dobrin's article on the selection of Yannick Nezet-Seguin ("Canada's 'rising star' to be Phila. maestro," Monday). To Dobrin, no one but Jurowski could possibly be worthy of the position. I am concerned that his future articles on the new director could well be unwarrantedly critical.

IT WAS the midpoint in the era when teeming masses, yearning to breathe free, arrived on our shores - and were on their own to find their way in a new land. Jacob and Rose Bain arrived from Romania in 1905, two of 12 million immigrants who arrived at and passed through Ellis Island. Papers in hand, they made their way to South Philadelphia, which had a sizable Jewish community. Why South Philly? In a voice barely above a whisper, Jeff Jolles, 67, the Bains' great-grandson, says that they had some family there.

A year ago, I took a boat ride up the Schuylkill to the Fairmount Water Works. To reach that elegant, neoclassical structure below the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you must first pass a sprawling South Philadelphia complex that was designed to quench a different thirst for a once rapidly industrializing nation. On that summer day, the sounds, smells, and flashes emanating from the metal city that is Sunoco Inc.'s refinery overwhelmed the quietude of the trees and greenery that line much of the river's western bank.

Time out of mind, the chief commercial structure in the Pine Barrens hamlet of Chatsworth has been the general store at the crossroads. But by the time next year's cranberry crop is ready to be gathered in, Chatsworth will be home to a new $8 million receiving station, where the sour fruit will be washed, sorted and graded. Chatsworth - population 800 - is about halfway between the Wharton and Lebanon State Forests in Burlington County. It is also very much at the center of New Jersey's booming cranberry bogs.

YOU KNOW a microbrewery has stepped it up a notch when it graduates from kegs to bottles and cans - and not just because the beer can be shipped to more drinkers in new destinations. It's one thing to fill up a half-barrel with 15.5 gallons of brew. It's a whole 'nother thing to spray exactly 12 ounces of those gushing suds into an assembly line of fragile glass and dentable aluminum containers. It takes a lot of cash, plenty of floor space, technical experience and unending patience to handle the touchy, highly calibrated packaging equipment.