Boston Beer Co., brewer of Samuel Adams beers, has been conducting tastings around the country all summer long where consumers can help pick one of the beers that will be sold in the 2008 Brewmaster’s Collection 12-pack. The winning beer will also be sold in six-packs throughout the U.S.

This year’s contenders are a spicy, fruity (particularly banana) Dunkelweizen and rich, caramel-accented Irish Red Ale.

In similar contests, a Brown Ale won voting in 2005 while Honey Porter bested a Smoked Lager in 2006.

Information about where to find a tasting event is at the Samuel Adams web site.

Here are just a few tidbits to make you laugh; for a full listing, click here. 

• In Fairbanks, AK, it is illegal to serve alcoholic beverages to moose.
• In Colorado, it is illegal to ride a horse while under the influence…It is also illegal 1) for liquor stores to sell food and 2) for food stores to sell alcohol with an ABW greater than 3.2%. Beer with 3.2% ABW is called “low point beer.” Beer with higher alcohol levels can be purchased in liquor stores…The sale of alcohol is prohibited on Election Day….Ban on off-premises sale of alcohol on Sundays.
• In Hawaii, underage purchase of alcohol is prohibited except for law enforcement purposes…Underage consumption of alcohol is not explicitly prohibited.
• In the state of Maine, it is illegal to possess an unlabeled, unregistered keg – punishment is a maximum fine of $500 and/or time in prison. It is illegal to destroy the label on a keg, punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 or 6 months in prison.

Find your state’s silly beer law, here!

Cranberries move over, In the UK’s Somerset Country bog water is now being turned into an award winning beer, courtesy of Exmoor’s first microbrewery. Real ale lover Jim Winzer, and his wife Elke, who run the Crosslanes House Hotel in Allerford, have joined forces with Exford farmer Lindley Williams to produce and market their new Dunkery Ale, using water from a spring at nearby Downscombe Bog, the prime source of water for the Williams’ Edgcott Farm for generations, and brewed in Lindley’s old cowshed. The outcome? well, the resulting beer is apparently so good that the brew has been presented with an award by none other than the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). And they were worried when I used tap water in my homebrew…

Attorneys general from Maine and more than two dozen other states asked federal regulators Monday to launch a probe into the advertising techniques of companies marketing caffinated beer-hybrids with slogans such as “You can sleep when you’re 30,” saying they are targeting underage drinkers. A letter written by the attorneys general to the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (which oversees advertising for beer, wine and spirits) named four products and three manufacturers suspected of skirting the rules. It also called for a broader investigation of the advertising campaigns that promote caffeinated alcoholic drinks. The letter, which comes on the back of regulation passed in 2005 that prohibited advertisements that implied the caffeinated alcoholic drinks were stimulants, or that the additives somehow offset the effects of alcohol, claims that campaigns for the caffeinated drinks Sparks, Bud Extra, Liquid Charge, and Liquid Core violate federal advertising regulations.