Beer

At the infield fence near the turn for the last quarter-mile, Dan Stachura, John Reckner and their friends had marked off a prime piece of real estate with the same type of yellow tape used at homicide scenes. Their only complaint: The limited beer selection at Pimlico is a crime. Stachura, 43, and Reckner, 48, gave the race course managers some credit for improvement -- noting that the selection is no longer limited to Bud and Bud Light. "They have an older, more mature crowd that's not worried about spending money," Reckner said.

Over the past five years, the west side of downtown has been one of the city's most unforgiving neighborhoods for new bars. They open and close here as quickly as it takes 8.9 percent alcohol to slip into your bloodstream. Alewife, the new beer hall at Eutaw and Fayette streets, is hoping to turn the trend on its head with sheer size and suds selection. Billed as a high-end beer hall, the Daniel Lanigan-owned bar boasts of having a sprawling beer list — 40 on tap and 100 bottled varieties.

Selling beer to an underage, undercover police volunteer has proved costly to the owners of two Howard County liquor stores. Rakesh Shah, licensee of a 7-Eleven located at 9049 Frederick Road in Ellicott City, was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and to stop selling alcohol on four days over two consecutive weekends starting May 6. The county's appointed Alcoholic Beverage License Board imposed a $600 fine on Winfield Kelly III's Woodbine Wine and...

Heavy Seas Loose Cannon, the flagship beer of Clipper City Brewing Co., hasn't stayed on shelves of stores across 18 states and Washington, D.C., for long. The thirst of beer drinkers for the India pale-ale-style beer showed no signs of diminishing this year as it made up nearly 50 percent of the brewery's sales, according to a company spokeswoman, Kelly Zimmerman. To meet the demand, the Halethorpe-based brewery stopped production of its imperial cream ale, called Davey Jones Lager, until next summer.

On June 11, 2003, DORIS E. BEER, mother of Eugene H. Beer, III, Sally B. Murray and Susan B. Browne; grandmother of Rebecca R. Lynch, Sally T. Murray, Linda M. Ruiz, George P. Beer, Eugene H. Beer, IV; great-grandmother of four. Memorial services Tuesday, June 17, 2003 at 3 P.M. in the chapel of the Church of The Redeemer, 5603 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21210.

If you are having trouble generating fond feelings toward bankers — say you hold them responsible for the nation's financial meltdown and the subsequent mortgage mess — you should visit Alewife , a tavern in downtown Baltimore that once was a bank. This former countinghouse now serves beer. Lots of very good beer: Forty beers on tap and 100 in bottles. If you sit in the back room next to the old vault, as I did, and have tall Victory Prima Pils ($5.50) and nibble on the smoked tomato and goat cheese flan appetizer ($10)

BERLIN - Germans are losing their taste for their national drink. Beer consumption dropped 4.3 percent in the first half of the year to 1.4 billion gallons - 63.4 million gallons less than last year, according to statistics released yesterday by the government. Bad weather was partly to blame, with a belated summer keeping drinkers away from outdoor beer gardens. But also cutting consumption were a more health-conscious public and changing work habits, as fewer people do manual labor where beer drinking is a break-time tradition.

Beer rules. It is the alcoholic beverage we Americans say we drink most often, besting wine, its closest competitor, by double digits. That was my take after reading the 2008 Gallup Poll of consumption habits, released last week. It found that 42 percent of the U.S. drinkers surveyed said they most often consumed beer, compared with 31 percent who picked wine and 23 percent who preferred spirits. Not so long ago, the same poll had beer playing second fiddle to wine. Back in 2005, wine had knocked beer out of first place.

Expectations were predictably high, and how could they not? Opened in late May after months of anticipation, Of Love and Regret could be Brewers Hill's highest-profile collaboration ever. The duo behind it come with reputations: Stillwater Artisanal Ales' founder Brian Strumke and Jack's Bistro's co-owner/chef Ted Stelzenmuller have teamed up, hoping to create a blissful marriage of Strumke's craft beers and Stelzenmuller's affordable, seasonal food. After two recent visits to the consistently packed establishment, it's safe to say their goal has been accomplished nearly out of the gate.

WITH THE surprisingly abrupt withdrawal of H. Ross Perot from the presidential campaign, President Bush and his advisers will surely attempt a new, 1992-style Southern Strategy to try to put an electoral hurting on Bill Clinton and Al Gore in their own Dixie backyards.Mr. Perot might have gummed up the works in several states of the Old Confederacy -- particularly in the Bush and Perot home state of Texas -- but now all territory below the Mason-Dixon line is up for grabs again.Nonpartisan political junkies like myself, of course, are hoping for some old-fashioned hardball.