Fresh Pint...Maine Beer Co. Peeper Ale

PORTLAND, MAINE. Home of Allagash, Shipyard, and several other larger craft breweries. Also, home of newly created Maine Beer Company. The operation was started by two brothers, David and Daniel Kelban, with a glorified home-brewing system in an unheated garage. They currently produce 4 beers - Peeper, Zoe, Mean Old Tom, Lunch IPA. We're determined to try them all. So far, we've only had the Peeper Ale (named for the chorus of small frogs all along eastern North America whose high-pitched calls between twilight and dawn herald the onset of spring/early summer), and we're singing praise.

Interview, off the cuff: Sweet Red Vermouth

WHEN ASKED "what's you favorite sweet red vermouth", a mixologist will invariably respond with another question. But we usually want the most information we can get, so questions err on the side of general rather than specific.

Today, as a matter of course the mildly annoyed bartender asked if the vermouth would be drunk straight or mixed. Not dropping a note, we made it clear that neither answer could outweigh the other [though, due to circumstance, we found that one indeed did]. The following is a roughly drawn abstract of our exchange with Sean Maher, bartender/mixologist at Eastern Standard Kitchen (Kenmore Square, Boston):