Beer gardens, ‘beertinis’ and other news

SUMMER MIGHT BE beginning to wind down, but outdoor beer gardens are still in full swing for at least a few more months. Virtually everyone loves a good beer garden.

In a recent USA Today Readers’ Choice Award article, Massachusetts’ Cisco Brewers took sixth place in the readers’ top 10 beer gardens. Considering that the newspaper is a national publication, that’s pretty impressive for the Nantucket-based brewery.

“Cisco Brewers stands out as one of the top attractions on an island permeated by perfect beaches for its nearly yearround entertainment, brewery tours, local food truck vendors, and selection of beer on tap,” the article stated.

As happy as I am to see a Bay State brewery on this list, I have to say that the list skewed heavily to East Coast breweries. Only one of the top 10 was west of the Mississippi River (in Colorado), and I found it odd that two of the top 10 were in Washington D.C and another two in North Carolina. That means there were four places in the top 10 within a 300-mile radius, and remember, the continental U.S. is more than 3 million square miles.

Then again, this was a readers’ poll, so it was at the mercy of the vagaries associated with such fickle endeavors. What criteria that various people uss to rate a beer garden is anyone’s guess. But this article made me wonder: What aspects make a beer garden attractive to you? Let me know at geolenker@yahoo.com.

In other August beer news, research out of the University of California has shown that a prescription drug can help reduce binge drinking.

UCSF Community Health Systems professor Glenn-Milo Santos, Ph.D., MPH, has shown that naltrexone, (a drug that has been employed to treat alcohol use disorder for decades) could possibly reduce