Late this week, Beer Advocate started experiencing some intermittent service on its site. The site isn’t 100% back to normal yet but Todd is posting updates on Twitter for those who can’t make it online. Here is the post from Todd on BA explaining the situation: “Our host confirms that last night they experienced a service-wide Denial of Service (DoS) attack and apparently resolved the issue. We’re still experiencing issues, and they’ve been informed and are investigating the issue.”

The bear gets replaced by Santa on the new label for Port Bourbon Barrel-Aged Santa’s Little Helper, according to the latest from Lost Abbey. I must say that I’m surprised to see the mention of oak barrels on the label instead of bourbon. The brewery announced a 6 bottle limit for all of the special releases at the Christmas in July party on July 25th except for Older Viscosity for which you can take home a case. Summary below:

* Santa’s Little Helper (Bourbon Barrel-aged) – 22ounce bottles; 6 bottle limit
* Older Viscosity 2009 – 375ml bottles; 12 bottle limit
* Duck Duck Gooze (yes, that Duck Duck Gooze) – 750ml bottles; 6 bottle limit
* The Angel’s Share (Bourbon Barrel-aged) – 750ml bottles; 6 bottle limit

In other Lost Abbey news, this year’s Ten Commandments batch should be making it to stores now.

Hopping down to the Panhandle (I was thinking Tallahassee) Florida, Cigar City Brewing announced that it bottled 100 cases of Guava Grove Saison this week. No release date announced yet. Also, they bottled the first Humidor Series beer: Jai Alai India Pale Ale (regular Jai Alai aged in the tank on toasted Spanish Cedar).

Yazoo Brewing out of Nashville releases its 3rd bottled edition of Hop Project. For beer geeks only: “Hop Project #16 is hopped with Galena, Zeus, and Columbus at first wort, Goldings and Ahtanum at 30 minutes left for flavor, and with Perle and Ahtanum at 5 minutes left for aroma. We use Perle a good bit in our beers, but always as a bittering hop, never as an aroma or flavor hop. So for this one, we also dry-hopped it with a combination of Perle and Ahtanum. Finally, we wanted to experiment with the mineral profile of the beer, which changes how the bitterness is perceived on your tongue. We ususally use add gypsum to the water for hoppy beers, which tends to sharpen the hop bitterness. But this time we switched to calcium chloride, which rounds out the malt flavors a little more.

More Beer Notes: Watch for Brewdog 5am Saint sometime this year … Three Floyds Brewing captured nature at work in its parking lot on Friday … The Bruery Provisions, the brewery’s month-old homebrew shop … Constructions updates from NC at Mother Earth Brewing.