Daily Beer Digest - 03.30.2011

Click here to vote in Round 4 of the Washington Post's 2011 Beer Madness.

Great Divide is pulling out of a large number of states, including Michigan, DC, and much of Virginia. Luckily, it looks like Northern Virginia customers will still have access to Great Divide through Hop & Wine, so DC is mostly in the clear as well. Musings Over a Pint has a post on Great Divide's back-and-forth history in Virginia.

In other distribution news, Shelton Brothers is pulling out of Indiana, meaning the Hoosier state will no longer receive beer from Cantillon, Mikkeller, Struise, and others. See the report from Hoosier Beer Geek. This is yet another setback for Indiana, which also recently lost Dogfish Head.

De Struise released a small number of bottles of Double Black, a massive 26% iced version of Cuvee Delphine, early this morning, around 5:00 AM EDT. The bottles sold out in a little over an hour, even with a hefty price tag. Here's the Beer Advocate discussion on the topic. Thankfully, rumor has it that the next batch will be out soon and released in 33cl bottles as opposed to this release, which was in 750ml bottles.

The tax relief bill for small brewers has been introduced in the House and Senate.

Based on a tweet from FiftyFifty (Twitter), it looks like this year's Eclipse versions will be aged in the following barrels: Buffalo Trace (new), Elijah Craig (was previously done in 2009), Four Roses (previously done in 2010), and Rittenhouse Rye (new). The brewery also put up a separate webpage devoted to Eclipse, which announces that Futures for this year's batch will be available on April 15.

New information on the status of Discovery's Brewmasters TV show came to light today, as Anthony Bourdain tweeted that Big Beer had nixed the program by threatening to pull their advertising. The revelation sparked quite a bit of discussion on Beer Advocate.