Beer

Always, there seems to be a steady stream of people going in and out of the Foodarama on Torresdale Avenue in Tacony. Inside the squat, brown-and-gold building at the corner of Longshore Avenue is almost everything in the way of convenience for the neighborhood. There's a check-cashing service, a lottery ticket window, an 82-seat delicatessen serving dill-flavored chicken soup, hot pastrami sandwiches and scrambled eggs, and a mid-size supermarket that delivers. If you need help with your tax return, just ask. Want a caterer for your parents' anniversary party?

Brett Favre says he wants out of the NFL's substance-abuse program not because he craves a beer, but because he misses his freedom. Favre is appealing his status in the league program, which he entered in May after he told the NFL he was addicted to the painkiller Vicodin. His appeal is being reviewed by NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who could reach a decision as early as week's end, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported yesterday. Favre, last year's MVP, spent 46 days last summer at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan., to treat his addiction.

It was poetry reading night at the recently opened Cafe Flix on North Church Street in West Chester. A man with long brown hair squeezed his way through the crowd up to the old wooden bar, where countless draft beers and shots of whiskey used to be served. He ordered a six-pack to go. "We don't serve alcohol," Dave Shur, owner of the cafe, informed the patron from behind the bar. The man seemed momentarily stunned. He stared into the glass-front refrigerator that for years had been stocked with assorted beers.

HOW MANY calories are in your favorite beer? There's almost no way to know for sure. Unlike most all other food products in America, beer, wine and spirits are exempt from the federal Food & Drug Administration's nutritional labeling requirements. Those labels we squint at while grazing in the supermarket for low-fat Cheez Doodles are absent from beer packaging. "Even mom-and-pop oatmeal cookie companies have to divulge their nutritional data," author Bob Skilnik said. "Why not brewers and vintners?"

The "sour beast" was rising. When I'd first tasted it in the preliminary round of this year's Brew-vitational, the Inquirer's annual competition for local beers, my eyes almost crossed from the intense tartness of its barrel-fermented red fruit. But by the finals round, once we'd winnowed the 39 beers entered in the "new" beer category down to 10 top contenders, my taste buds had snapped to attention and tuned in to the proper frequency. And this sour ale aged in wine and whiskey barrels for a year-and-a-half with wild yeast and raspberries was suddenly an irresistible beam of bright fruit light.

A dozen events at this year's The Book and the Cook acknowledged Philadelphia's status as one of the country's great cities for fine beer. In his 12th annual appearance at the festival, celebrated beer writer Michael Jackson explored the differences between ales and lagers. He appeared at an intimate dinner Friday night and at three informal "tutored tastings" (with 400 thirsty guests each) on Saturday, all at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Maybe it was only the first round, but the victory went to the neighborhood. No, the city Zoning Board of Adjustment members said, one after another. No. No. No and No. No zoning variance for a takeout beer and food store in a vacant warehouse at 60th Street and Springfield Avenue. It was a victory that felt good to residents of this Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, still recovering from the July 1988 shooting death of 5-year-old Marcus Yates, inside a now-closed variety store on the same corner.

A Delaware County teacher has been charged with furnishing alcohol to two of her students. State Police arrested Katherine Leigh Preusser, 33, an English teacher at Ridley High School, on March 23, after a car in which she was a passenger was pulled over and open beer cans were found inside. Two students also were in the car at the time, one of them driving, officials said. Preusser was charged with corruption of minors, furnishing alcohol to minors, drug possession, and other related crimes.

MIXING BEER and ice cream seems like a totally gross idea that should offend everyone. It is a disservice to two perfectly fine indulgences, akin to mixing baseball and sex. There is no reason to believe they might be consenting partners. Indeed, no less an authority than the Weekly World News reported on April 11, 1989, that beer floats were among "the world's weirdest snacks," on a "bizarre" list that included liverwurst-and-grape-jelly sandwiches. The tabloid's culinary warnings notwithstanding, I'm obliged to report that pouring beer into ice cream does not disturb the natural order.

Frankford Avenue has a world-class assortment of beer drinkers' bars. That's a good thing because there are world-class reasons to cry in your beer as you mourn important civic history that's been lost to modernization. If you go, bring a box of Kleenex along with your designated driver. The Grey Lodge Pub 6235 Frankford Ave. You can drink: Preferably, one of the 10 microbrews that are on tap the day you visit. The selection changes often and include intriguing options like Middle Ages Wailing Wench and Troegs Sunshine Pils.