Part I of today’s beer notes update.

Cigar City Brewing: Per Facebook, “It’s a busy time at the brewery these days. Lots of exciting stuff coming up. We’re releasing Marshal Zhukov’s Imperial Stout to the public on Saturday, August 6th. We have Fruit in the Room coming up August 20th. And to coincide with the excitement of Fruit in the Room, we’re going to have a very special bottle release on that day, too! We’ll keep the beer a secret for a while….stay tuned.”

Cantillon: A bit late on this one… “So to recap, there will not be any bottles of Zwanze put on sale so as to avoid any overpricing. On top of this, contrary to what was done with the Zwanze in previous years (with 80% of the production going into bottles), 2/3 of the Zwanze production for 2011 has been put into barrels. The goal here is to try to make certain that Cantillon enthusiasts everywhere will have a chance to taste the beer while short-circuiting those whose just want to make a fast buck.

In order to create an ephemeral event for this ephemeral beer, I decided to have all these barrels opened and enjoyed on the same day, when possible at the same time, by our friends throughout the world in places like Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the United States, Japan, Canada, France and Belgium.

This event, which we’ll call ‘ZwanzeDay,’ will take place on Saturday, 17 September […]” List of locations is up on the website.

BrewDog: Stirred up quite the frenzy with a post about CAMRA not accepting them to the next Great British Beer Festival. The beer blogosphere has been abuzz about it.

Wachusett Brewing: From Friday’s newsletter, “This August, be on the lookout for our Imperial Pumpkin Ale. This brand new beer is brewed with Pumpkin Puree and accented with Belgian Candi Sugar, Cinnamon, Nutmeg and Ginger. It will contain a generous amount of Two Row Barley blended with Carmel Malt and then fermented with Northwest Yeast, creating a unique profile for any fall beer drinker. This will be the fourth release in our line-up of 22 oz. beers and will beat out Larry as the strongest beer we’ve ever brewed at 8%.” Launch is Thursday August 11th, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (ticketed event).

Cape Cod Beer: Per Thursday’s newsletter, “Christmas in July is our OLD MAN WINTER…our winter STRONG ALE..aged on Oak. Different this year is that we were unable to purchase champagne bottles (glass shortage it appears) and have gone to our flip top souvenir bottle for this year. The cost has gone down too. So starting MONDAY July 25th.. until they are gone.. we will have about four hundred 500 ml bottles of it available at the brewery only! Limit four per customer. Available July 25th ~ $10 – (sorry no holds or online orders)”

Baxter Brewing: From last week’s newsletter, “We are proud to announce that starting at the end of August our beers will be available in the greater Boston and North Shore areas with the rest of Massachusetts to follow shortly thereafter. We are excited to start our relationship with Burke Distributing Co. out of Randolph, MA and Merrimack Valley Distributing Co. out of Danvers, MA! We’re super excited to announce that our new 120 bbl conditioning tank and two new 60 bbl fermenters arrived this week.”

Community Beer Works: Got TTB approval as a brewery earlier this month. Dig the ‘progress bar‘ they have going across the top of the website…

Bonus Ireminds us once again that the better beer phenomenon isn’t US-centric but happening in other parts of the world.