Beer

A dream had carried the boys so far from home, some 5,000 miles across the ocean to a cramped and dingy apartment in Philadelphia: a hope that ice hockey could change their lives. Ivan Pravilov could fulfill that dream, they were told. He could take them from the daily grind of post-communist Ukraine to the gleaming ice of the NHL. He'd done it before. He'd done if for Andrei Zyuzin, who went on to play for six NHL teams. He'd done it for Konstantin Kalmikov, a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996.

A West Chester high school swim coach, who allegedly posed as a swimmer's father, plied her with beer and had sex with her multiple times, was arrested Wednesday and charged on felony sex assault counts and corruption of a minor. Kenneth William Fuller, 47, was head coach of the Rustin High School swim team. A member of the team, a teenage girl, told police that she had had several assignations with Fuller at parks and coffee shops outside of school before he took her on April 27 to a Kennett Square hotel.

Having a beer at 9 a.m. is early, even for brewery owners. But this is a special occasion. Kevin Finn, Kevin Davies, and Mark Edelson, the three owners of the Iron Hill brewpub chain, are perched at a high table in the back of the West Chester restaurant, which, this morning, has been transformed into a makeshift film set. They are filming a training video for new employees, to ensure that the Iron Hill ethos is properly relayed. With about 900 employees, it's sort of hard for Finn, Davies, and Edelson to get face time with each new hire these days.

IFIND IT REALLY sad that there are some people who are basing there decision of who to vote for on who they would rather have a beer with. If W. is re-elected, chances are he'll be drinking alone. Those of us in the lower and middle class probably won't be able to afford to buy a beer. People need to wake up and vote on the issues. Gore was a bore, but he wouldn't have made most of the country poor. Now is the time to atone for that mess of an election in 2000. Don't leave it to the conservative Supreme Court to "reappoint" W. Let's elect John Kerry and take our country back.

Beer is no longer the cloth coat of beverages, once associated with fast food and cheap dates, acceptable only at the beach, on the foul line, or in front of the television, according to Hal Rubenstein in Elle magazine. Beer has become as fashionable as high-topped sneakers. Currently, the most popular new beer in California is a light, spicy Mexican beer called Corona. What is unique about Corona, however, is how it often is served - with a wedge of lime pushed down the neck of the bottle.

THE Daily News editorial "Wrong Cure for Stop-n-Gos" (July 6) correctly indicates that the beer-to-go permit process violated the due process rights of storeowners because City Council commingled legislative and prosecutorial functions. But the editorial rationalizes Council's actions by using these businesses as scapegoats for many of the problems in the city. So it's necessary to provide the other side of the story. Your editorial states that granting a state liquor license to a store depends on Council's acceptance of a beer-to-go permit.

Sidled up against the polished cherry-wood bar, watching the bartender tip a tall, slender glass at a perfect 45-degree angle beneath the shiny brass spigot, creating just the right frothy head on the amber ale I had ordered, an image flashed through my head: Boy, had my beer-drinking come a long way since the days I sat with my college friends on a park bench in the median on Broadway, passing around a bottle of Colt 45 hidden in a paper bag. ...

GRATITUDE TO Harrisburg lawmakers reaching their long arms into the way the city does business is not something we welcome every day. In fact, the messages we send are usually the opposite: Whether it's the takeover of the city Parking Authority or Harrisburg's attempts to Big Foot our zoning authority over casinos, our usual message is "Go away. " But we're grateful for the new state law that puts some sense back into the process of issuing stop-n-go beer takeout licenses.

It definitely wasn't Miller Time in Yeadon Thursday night. Upset with a growing problem of teenage drinking, about 30 residents packed Borough Hall, wanting reassurance from council members that they and police would monitor the sale of beer at a deli on Church Lane. The residents are concerned about the proposed expansion of Span's Deli, at 706 Church Lane, into a convenience store with added seating for patrons. Although the deli has sold beer for about 15 years, residents said the expansion would add to an underage drinking problem in the neighborhood.

YOU THINK WE have a pretty good beer scene now? You should've seen this town back in 1879. Every neighborhood had its own brewery, and every corner had a saloon. In the preceding 30 years, more than 250 breweries had opened — many of them closing quickly, but others becoming national powers. A census by Western Brewer magazine counted an astonishing 94 breweries up and running. The city's population was barely half of today's, and yet it had 12 times the number of breweries we boast of in 2012.

TOO MANY COOKS may spoil the broth, but too many brewers never ruined the beer. The proof is all those fabulous one-offs featuring two, three or more brewery logos on the bottles. These so-called collaborative beers are made by beer-makers from competing breweries who share the brewhouse for a day in the spirit of artisanal camaraderie. That professional friendship is one of the important traits that makes craft brewing appealing to so many. Once again, Philly Beer Week will show off a bunch of collabs, including Speciale Belge, made in Belgium by Iron Hill brewer Chris LaPierre and by Olivier DeDeycker of the famed Belgian Brasserie Dupont.

A West Chester high school swim coach was arrested Wednesday on charges that he posed as a swimmer's father, plied her with beer, and had sex with her. Kenneth William Fuller, 47, head coach of the Bayard Rustin High School swim team, was charged with felony sex assault and corruption of a minor. "This was a despicable violation of trust," said Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan. A member of the team, a teenage girl, told police that Fuller took her to a Kennett Square hotel April 27 and gave her "multiple" beers, court documents state.

Here are tasting notes on some of my favorite Italian beers tasted recently in the Philadelphia area. Prices are retail, unless otherwise noted. Bruton Bianca , 750 ml, $19 at Pizzeria Stella (Second and Lombard) — similar to a Belgian wit, but creamier in texture due to the use of Tuscan spelt, with finely woven coriander, orange peel, and white pepper. Bruton 10 , 750 ml, $28 at a.Kitchen (135 S. 18th St.) — a big barley wine with 10 percent alcohol, but stunning lack of burn, rich with licorice, tobacco, and caramel.

The word birrificio may not yet quite roll off the tongue. But if Philadelphians continue to plunge into the exotic new beers that have recently begun appearing here from Tuscany, Piedmont, and Emiglia-Romagna, brewed with everything from chestnuts to barbera grapes, chinotto peel and myrrh, the Italian word for brewery should become a familiar one, indeed. The unfamiliarity is understandable. In a country better known for vino like Chianti and Barolo, the craft-beer industry is still in its infancy, dating only to 1996, when Teo Musso and Agostino Arioli opened their pioneering breweries in Piedmont, Birreria Le Baladin and Birrificio Italiano, respectively.

It's been 139 years since they served beer in Haddonfield's Indian King Tavern. But that will change Saturday when barrels of Colonial style beers will be tapped at a fund-raiser for the museum and historic site, meeting place of the New Jersey Rebel Assembly in 1777. Since Haddonfield has been dry since 1873, organizers have obtained a special permit from the state to sell beer to help pay for renovations at the tavern. Philadelphia's Yards Brewery is supplying the beer and food will be served.

LAST MONTH'S media reports that beer consumption makes you smarter ranks up there as one of the no-spit revelations of all time. The "revelation" stemmed from a paper called "Uncorking the Muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving," by scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It concluded that test subjects solved certain problems more quickly after reaching a blood-alcohol level of .075 percent. Alcohol, the researchers proved, helps the brain access remote areas and develop ideas beyond the confines of typical linear reasoning.

FIVE YEARS AGO, the whole notion of a "beer week" was as unknown as a black IPA. There simply was no such thing. Today, if you plug the term into Google, you'll get more than 2.3 million results. There's an entry on the subject in the new Oxford Companion to Beer. San Francisco beer writer Jay Brooks, who wrote the section, has compiled an online list of nearly 100 beer weeks worldwide, from Alabama to Yakima. They now celebrate beer week in Tokyo; Toronto; Newcastle, Australia; and Washington, D.C. Next week, I'm headed out to San Diego for the annual Craft Brewers Conference to participate in a panel discussion about the beer-week phenomenon.

IT'S A MOONLESS Thursday night in North Wales, Montgomery County. Down a dead-end street just past the giant Merck & Co. pharmaceutical plant, tucked along the SEPTA R5 railroad tracks, a darkened industrial building attracts a young crowd. The unpaved parking lot is full, light sounds of live jazz seep from the rear door, and the air carries the familiar aroma of malt. Welcome to Prism Brewing's Tap Room, one of the region's best-kept beer-drinking secrets and, it turns out, a harbinger of a remarkable surge of suburban breweries.

Martin M. Beer, 88, a mathematics teacher at Haddonfield Memorial High School from 1953 to 1983 who also led cycling tours of Europe before and after his retirement, died of pulmonary hypertension Wednesday, April 4, at Kendal-Crosslands, the retirement community near Kennett Square. In 1964, Mr. Beer and his wife, Winifred, organized Haddon Cycle Tours, first for students and later for adults, a part-time business that they continued until 1992. He met his wife in 1950, at a Quaker meeting in Cambridge, Mass., while he was taking summer courses at Harvard University.