Craft Beer News Roundup: Stone, Trader Joe’s, North Coast, Goose Island and More

Time for your dose of craft beer news. Here are some quickies on Stone Brewing, Trader Joe’s, The Bruery, Goose Island, North Coast Brewing and Dogfish Head. Cheers!

Stone – Posted a few weeks back  on Stone’s Facebook Page -“We have winner(s)! Jason Fields & Kevin Sheppard’s Cherry Chocolate Stout emerged victorious in our annual AHA Rally & Homebrew Competition. Those lucky gents will get to brew their beer on our ultra-shiny brewery & entered into the Pro-Am Competition at the next Great American Beer Fest. Look for it on taps & shelves in June!”

Trader Joes –Trader Joe’s will start stocking their shelves with Mission Street Anniversary Ale, which is an Imperial Brown Ale.  The brewers, Firestone Walker, will not comment on this, but we have found out this is not a repackaged Rufus or Bravo, but rather a mystery blend of dark ales. Stay tuned for tasting notes.

The Bruery – Save the date! May 29th we’ll be holding our 3rd anniversary celebration and this year we’re making it AWESOME. Details to come.

Goose Island – Goose Island has a few other variations of their amazing BCS (Bourbon County Stout) that they unleashed last week for Stout Fest. “Last weekend Goose Island brought several variations of our beloved Bourbon County Brand Stout to Stout Fest, including a Mexican Hot Chocolate BCS, Chocolate Cherry BCS, and Ancho Chile BCS. Brewer John showed us how to make Ancho Chile BCS and explained the inspiration behind the beer.” Here’s a great YouTube video explaining the Ancho Chile BCS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uijviYFO1nE

North Coast Brewing – North Coast Brewing quietly tweaked their logo. Here’s the graphic. http://yfrog.com/gzhb93j

Dogfish Head – Last week Dogfish Head announced they would be pulling out of 4 states. We will be blogging about this shortly. Here’s an excerpt from Sam’s Blog. “The distributors in the states we are pulling distribution from (Tennessee, Indiana, Wisconsin and Rhode Island) have already been notified of our decision.” We know this was reported a lot last week, but we wanted to make sure our loyal readers knew.