Beer

Those crazy Belgians are always adding orange peel to their wheat beers. An East Bay brewery goes them one further -- it puts the juice and the flowers into an ale, giving it a little orange juice tang, as you'd expect. Surprisingly, though, the sweet orange blossom scent shows up more in the palate than in the nose. The nose actually suggests a fruity white wine, perhaps a Semillon, rather than an ale. So is this a food beer?

It sounds too good to be true: A residential system that allows people to make fuel from old beer, leftover wine and other waste products and use it to run their vehicles. That's what inventors of the E-Fuel MicroFueler claim, and there's support for the idea in government, industry and pop culture. MicroFueler buyers are eligible for a $5,000 tax credit. Former L.A. Laker Shaquille O'Neal is an investor in the system's distributor. The $10,000 E-Fuel MicroFueler consists of a 250-gallon tank for organic feedstock, such as waste wine and beer, and a still that converts it to pure ethanol, or E-Fuel.

Santa Barbara's Telegraph Brewing is the epitome of the eager, experimental microbrewery, enthusiastic about local ingredients and unfamiliar techniques. Its 19th century version of porter will shock most people by being tart. However, its flagship brew, California Ale, is totally accessible. It's a mouth-filling beer, unfiltered, fairly hoppy and rather malty with a subtle citrus note. Perhaps because it's sealed with a cork, a la Champagne, some people seem to think of it as a French saison , but I'd call it just a great big amber ale. Coppery in color with a huge white head, it's a little earthy on the palate with some sweetness showing up late.

A U.S. official and some colleges are telling the brewer of Bud Light to can it. Bud Light rolled out a marketing gimmick, "Fan Can," with the beer cans decorated with college team colors in selected markets just as the schools -- and their football teams -- were gearing up for a new season. But the campaign drew criticism from Janet Evans, a senior attorney with the Federal Trade Commission who oversees alcohol advertising, and from certain colleges because the cans could encourage underage drinking on their campuses.

Ask chefs to dish on their favorite variety of rice and you'll likely hear words such as fragrant, floral, nutty. But when craft brewers talk about the grain, it's not quite as reverent. "Rice is considered by many brewers what the nasty industrial brewers use to water down their beer," says Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew," a book exploring the history of brewing in the U.S. "Craft brewers treat rice almost as if it's rat poison." But recently, a handful of craft brewers in California, Colorado and Washington are challenging that blanket disdain for the grain by introducing complex, full-flavored rice beers.

For whatever his character flaws -- unrepentant narcissism, alcohol abuse, casual misogyny -- lack of confidence has never been a problem for Tucker Max. Just about everything the Florida-born Duke Law School grad has done to distinguish himself has fairly reeked of cocksurety. He became a minor media sensation in his mid-20s for www.tuckermax.com, the blog he started in 2002 to chronicle his hard-core partying and post-college sexcapades. Max's tales of drinking himself into blackouts, humiliating friends and insulting women, intermingled with vivid accounts of his sexual conquests won him legions of college-age admirers as well as the attention of Hollywood TV executives who began working with Max to develop a series envisioned as "Sex and the City" for guys.

While summer's still a living memory, one more fruit-scented wheat beer. Pyramid Breweries calls this one Audacious Apricot Ale and fills the label with sketchy but clearly reckless surfing figures, presumably so nobody will think it's some kind of frivolous soda pop. It certainly isn't. It's a much-decorated brew that goes back 15 years (even before Pyramid was calling itself Pyramid) and helped create the fruit beer phenomenon in this country. So Pyramid knows what it's doing.

Hours after throwing three touchdown passes last month to lead the Minnesota Vikings over his old Green Bay Packers, Brett Favre sent a one-word text message to Steve Mariucci, among his favorite onetime assistant coaches: "Flatliners." Instantly, Mariucci picked up on the inside joke. That was a code word the two shared back when Favre was in his early years with the Packers, and Mariucci was an up-and-coming assistant coach. It was a reference to the 1990 movie "Flatliners," and a reminder to the quarterback to maintain an even keel through the craziest times.