Kate Krader (@kkrader on Twitter) is Food & Wine's restaurant editor. When she tells us where to find our culinary heart's desire, we listen up.

Last week we spotlighted outstanding new breweries around the country, from Asheville, North Carolina, to Portland, Oregon. (Sometime soon, Florida microbreweries will get a post all to themselves.)
 
Speaking of Florida, this week, the focus swings to a different type of drinking establishment. It’s spring break, which of course means you can find yourself in the kind of bar that Bill Hader’s Stefon raved about on Saturday Night Live: “This place has everything: Lights, psychos, Furbies, screaming babies in Mozart wigs, sunburned drifters with soap-sud beards.”

Or you can ignore spring break in a great historical spot in New Orleans and pretend it’s not spring break right outside on Bourbon Street.
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Christopher Dawson is a producer with CNN Special Projects and works with CNN's Impact Your World team. Video by Greg Bowman, Eatocracy's go-to beer guy.

If that last beer made you feel a little warm and fuzzy inside, it could be because you just did some good. You may have just donated to a charity, just by buying a drink.

I first noticed this philanthropy trend while enjoying a new limited release IPA from Sweetwater Brewery called Second Helping. The name implies having more, and the compelling flavoring of juniper berries and chocolate malts had already sold me on that proposition.

But then I read the beer’s label and learned that it was crafted to benefit a charity called The Giving Kitchen, which helps people in the food industry going through hard times. This initiative was inspired by Atlanta chef Ryan Hidinger, who brought the Atlanta restaurant community together when he fought and ultimately lost his battle with cancer. His wife and friends decided to take the generous funds that were raised to help Ryan and pay it forward by creating this charity. I admit that it got me when I read that the juniper berries were added for Ryan, because he so enjoyed cooking with them.
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Kate Krader (@kkrader on Twitter) is Food & Wine's restaurant editor. When she tells us where to find our culinary heart's desire, we listen up.

Recently - and just in time for St. Patrick’s Day - Nerdwallet.com released a study on the cheapest cities for beer drinkers. Based on some fancy math that involves a six-pack of Heineken, median incomes, beer tax and beer demand, the site determined that Washington, DC, is the least expensive city for beer drinkers. (If you’re earning the median income, you could buy more than 30,000 Heinekens a year!) Of course, now you want to know the most expensive city for beer drinkers; according to Nerdwallet, that’s Chicago.
  
Now you know where your income is best spent on Heineken. Also good to know for St. Patrick’s Day are these outrageously good new breweries around the country, specializing in excellent beers, stouts and ales. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
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Two women's beer organizations, the Pink Boots Society from the United States and Project Venus from the United Kingdom, have teamed up to create a global, all-female brew day on March 8 in order to raise awareness of women in the industry.

International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day will allow women from more than 60 breweries around the world to create their own version of the collaborative, girl-powered recipe called Unite Pale Ale.

“The beauty of the recipe is that it still leaves room for creativity and uniqueness to the individual brewsters,” says Denise Ratfield, of the Pink Boots Society and San Diego-based Stone Brewing Co. (Industry jargon uses brewster as the feminine form of brewer.)

Sophie de Ronde, head brewer of Brentwood Brewing Company in Chelmsford, England, came up with the idea that has since spread stateside with the help of Ratfield and the Pink Boots Society.

“Our goal is to continue to empower women, educate them so that the future of craft beer will see a host of talented, capable women that will bring innovation to the industry,” Ratfield says. "We are passionate and feel the need to take charge of our own professional destiny."
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