A couple of news items – one that I missed and the other that arose earlier this week.

The first is that Alley Kat’s latest Dragon Single-Hop Series beer quietly hit shelves this week – no press release, no launch event. It just slipped onto the market. Black Dragon is the same beer as the previous versions, hopped with Warrior. I have a bottle in my possession, but, for the moment, haven’t tried it yet (hopefully to be rectified tonight). If this is like any of the other Dragons, it will sell out quite quickly, so don’t delay. Maybe that is why there was no official release – they didn’t need it and maybe it might slow sales down a touch.

For me, the timing of Black Dragon is fortuitous as I had already been planning to make Single Hop beer as my topic for my CBC column this Friday. The Black Dragon gives me a chance to do a side-by-side tasting on air, which always makes the column more interesting.

The second tidbit is that the CBC Edmonton television news on Tuesday night did a short piece highlighting that Yellowhead Brewing has been having trouble keeping up with quickly growing demand and has had to restrict its bottle offerings due to a malfunction on their bottling line. You can see the piece here.

As a news piece it is a bit thin (okay, a lot thin). I am actually not really sure what the “news” is in it. However, for beer fans it highlights three key bits of information. First, Yellowhead sales have jumped this spring, which is a good thing for all involved. Second, recent scarcities (I have recently experienced a couple of places where it was out) are due to this unexpected jump in sales – keep in mind that it is harder to turn lagers around than ales, which take 4-6 weeks to ale’s 2-4. Third, they have hopes of doing a full-out bottle assault in the fall. Their business plan, until now, has been to emphasize keg sales, which are both harder to achieve and less resource intensive. If they are feeling ready to make a push into bottle sales in liquor stores it must mean they are feeling confident enough about their position to take that step. I haven’t spoken with any one at the brewery about this – and am just going by their comments in the CBC piece. Overall a good news story, in my opinion.

Actually, both are good news stories, when you think about it. Most stories about craft beer are good news, after all.