Samuel Adams

Sunday, April 27 Pairing wine and chocolate , with tips from sommelier Eric Cavatore of Crossing Vineyards and Dough Haines of Newtown Chocolatier. $30, includes samples and learning materials. 2 p.m. at Crossing Vineyards and Winery, 1853 Wrightstown Rd., Washington Crossing. For reservations and more information call, 215-493-6500, Ext. 19, or visit www.crossingvineyards.com . Tuesday, April 29 Brewmaster's spring beer dinner , featuring a four-course menu that includes herb-crusted goat cheese salad, crab and shrimp spring rolls, grilled ostrich filet and more, all paired with house-brewed beer.

Joe's beer is back. Joseph W. Ortlieb, a member of one of Philadelphia's best-known brewing families, has returned to the business with a new beer that is now being distributed at beverage stores and taverns in Philadelphia and its Pennsylvania suburbs. It's called Trupert American Pilsner, and - hang on, Philadelphia - it's a micro beer, or one of those new, boutique brews that feature high-quality ingredients and prices to match. Ortlieb said Trupert should sell for about $16-$17 a case.

When U.S. Customs inspectors at the Philadelphia International Airport were checking the cargo coming from Trinidad on Nov. 7, 1990, they noticed that someone had spent an awful lot of money to ship powdered condensed milk and Ovaltine. "They thought to themselves, 'Why pay $1,000 to ship powdered milk from Trinidad?' " Assistant District Attorney Daniel A. Armstrong said this week. When customs inspectors James Benedetti and John Hughes checked the four boxes, they discovered 109 pounds of marijuana - with a street value of $350,000 - in the three boxes containing "Klim" condensed milk.

The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) surveys say that there are about 1.4 million home-brewers in the country and that the typical member not only brews 4 1/2 cases a month but also consumes about one case of commercial beer in that same time. But who are these home-brewers? Who are these people who risk bottle explosions and spend hours cleaning and filling reusable beer bottles when all they need do is go a few blocks for a case or a six-pack? Daniel Bradford, marketing director of the AHA, says the organization's rolls show that home-brewers "run the gamut from taxi drivers to genetic engineers, and from carpenters to Wall Street laywers.

The U.S. Customs Service wants to deport Samuel Adams to Trinidad, but it's likely to be a long while until he sees his homeland again. Adams can't leave until he finishes two prison terms in Chester and Delaware Counties. Yesterday, Adams was sentenced in Delaware County Court to 13 1/2 to 27 years in prison and fined $200,000 for arranging the shipment of 109 pounds of marijuana from Trinidad to Philadelphia International Airport. Judge Anthony R. Semeraro first sentenced Adams to 27 to 54 years, then amended the term after John Lachall, Adams' attorney, informed him that the sentence was above the maximum permitted.

It is staring me in the face, this blasted bottle of Budweiser. Thirty-two ounces in a caramel-brown bottle with a bright red label. The King of Friggin' Beers, baby. It's been maybe 10 years since Bud last touched Joe Sixpack's tongue. But now, in the spirit of journalistic accuracy, I find myself on the brink of actually tasting this dreck once more. The occasion is the Budweiser Backlash - a stiff, negative reaction to last year's network television broadside in which Anheuser-Busch claimed the nation's burgeoning microbrewery revolution was a fraud.

So it's Sunday night and I'm trying to find an Eagles score on the tube when I hear possibly the worst news a guy could hear under any circumstances, but especially those circumstances under which, having just consumed, oh, about two dozen different brews at a local beer festival, that fella has assumed a face-down position on the couch of his choice. Stay tuned, the TV says, for an exclusive report: THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT MICROBREWED BEER! What is it this time? Cancer? Botulism?

DOES IT really matter who makes your beer? The issue weirdly erupted during last month's great White House Beer Summit. Out of nowhere, even as the nation grappled over pressing issues like health-care reform, news pundits were blathering about the shocking revelation that Bud Light is foreign-owned. "Fox & Friends" host Gretchen Carlson (who looks like a Corona girl to me) flatly declared, for example, "They should be drinking American beer, in my mind. " Naturally, U.S. brewers chimed in and urged the president to serve their red-white-and-blue suds during his sit-down July 30 with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Cambridge, Mass.

In 1698, two dozen years before Samuel Adams was born (the patriot, mind you, not the beer label), a mayor in Faversham, Kent, England, set up a brewery over an artesian well. Only last year, the brewery, which later become Shepherd Neame, finally began to export its products to the colonies. Today's beer companies are fond of prattling on and on about all the time it takes to craft a beer. Shepherd Neame, England's longest-operating brewery, could use that excuse to explain why it took nearly three centuries to reach out to Americans.

For several years now, the arrival of Black History Month has rubbed me wrong - even as I eagerly and greedily partake of its bounty. The February banquet is rich with lectures, television specials, theatrical and musical performances and craft sales. The table of black culture and accomplishment groans under the weight of it all, but I am not satisfied. Because for the other 11 months - 337 days - of the year (minus a nod to Martin Luther King in January), African-American history gathers dust on a separate and unequal shelf, in libraries, in school curricula - and in most Americans' minds.

OUT WITH the old, and in with the new - it's time for some new beer in the new year. Here are two for 2011.   A national survey for Samuel Adams beers claims that more than 60 percent of men prefer to toast with beer versus champagne, if given the choice. I think it would have been 100 percent if guys knew they'd get to pop the cork. Which is exactly what they get to do with Infinium , a fascinating new collaboration between the youngish (25 years young) Sam Adams and Germany's decidedly old Weihenstephan Brewery, founded by Benedictine monks in 1040.

DOES IT really matter who makes your beer? The issue weirdly erupted during last month's great White House Beer Summit. Out of nowhere, even as the nation grappled over pressing issues like health-care reform, news pundits were blathering about the shocking revelation that Bud Light is foreign-owned. "Fox & Friends" host Gretchen Carlson (who looks like a Corona girl to me) flatly declared, for example, "They should be drinking American beer, in my mind. " Naturally, U.S. brewers chimed in and urged the president to serve their red-white-and-blue suds during his sit-down July 30 with Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Cambridge, Mass.

ANOTHER CELEBRITY chef has seen the light. This time it's Iron Chef and 2009 James Beard Award-winner Michael Symon who's embracing beer in a big way, partnering with Pilsner Urquell to promote the lager's compatibility with food. "I think beer is becoming more and more accepted" as a part of gourmet cuisine, Symon told me in a telephone interview from New York, where he was preparing for a live cooking demonstration featuring Pilsner Urquell in his recipes. "And as beer gets better, that's only going to continue to grow.

Sunday, April 27 Pairing wine and chocolate , with tips from sommelier Eric Cavatore of Crossing Vineyards and Dough Haines of Newtown Chocolatier. $30, includes samples and learning materials. 2 p.m. at Crossing Vineyards and Winery, 1853 Wrightstown Rd., Washington Crossing. For reservations and more information call, 215-493-6500, Ext. 19, or visit www.crossingvineyards.com . Tuesday, April 29 Brewmaster's spring beer dinner , featuring a four-course menu that includes herb-crusted goat cheese salad, crab and shrimp spring rolls, grilled ostrich filet and more, all paired with house-brewed beer.

In the beginning, there were Dock Street and Yards. When people talk about the early years of Philadelphia's brewing renaissance, the names of those craft beer makers are the ones mentioned most. In 1986, Dock Street, brewed under contract in New York State, appeared in the city just in time to compete with an interloper from Boston named Samuel Adams. Then, in 1994, in Manayunk, Yards became the first commercial brewer in the city since Schmidt's closed seven years earlier, ending a storied era in Philadelphia beer-making.

For several years now, the arrival of Black History Month has rubbed me wrong - even as I eagerly and greedily partake of its bounty. The February banquet is rich with lectures, television specials, theatrical and musical performances and craft sales. The table of black culture and accomplishment groans under the weight of it all, but I am not satisfied. Because for the other 11 months - 337 days - of the year (minus a nod to Martin Luther King in January), African-American history gathers dust on a separate and unequal shelf, in libraries, in school curricula - and in most Americans' minds.

Dear Santa, How's it going, geezer? Betcha didn't think I'd catch up to you after that little stunt you pulled last winter at our annual poker game. You walked out of the club after running five straight pots and didn't give the rest of us - the Easter Bunny, St. Patrick, the Tooth Fairy and me, Joe Sixpack - a chance to get our money back. None of us believed that baloney about catching the last train home to feed the reindeer. Heck, the R-2 line doesn't even go to the North Pole.

It is staring me in the face, this blasted bottle of Budweiser. Thirty-two ounces in a caramel-brown bottle with a bright red label. The King of Friggin' Beers, baby. It's been maybe 10 years since Bud last touched Joe Sixpack's tongue. But now, in the spirit of journalistic accuracy, I find myself on the brink of actually tasting this dreck once more. The occasion is the Budweiser Backlash - a stiff, negative reaction to last year's network television broadside in which Anheuser-Busch claimed the nation's burgeoning microbrewery revolution was a fraud.

So it's Sunday night and I'm trying to find an Eagles score on the tube when I hear possibly the worst news a guy could hear under any circumstances, but especially those circumstances under which, having just consumed, oh, about two dozen different brews at a local beer festival, that fella has assumed a face-down position on the couch of his choice. Stay tuned, the TV says, for an exclusive report: THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT MICROBREWED BEER! What is it this time? Cancer? Botulism?

In 1698, two dozen years before Samuel Adams was born (the patriot, mind you, not the beer label), a mayor in Faversham, Kent, England, set up a brewery over an artesian well. Only last year, the brewery, which later become Shepherd Neame, finally began to export its products to the colonies. Today's beer companies are fond of prattling on and on about all the time it takes to craft a beer. Shepherd Neame, England's longest-operating brewery, could use that excuse to explain why it took nearly three centuries to reach out to Americans.