A collection of some of the odd beer news that’s hit the web recently:

• Bulgaria reportedly has a breast-enhancing beer
  Sources here, here, and here. Bulgaria’s "Boza" beer is a traditional Turkish drink made from wheat flour and yeast and is reputed to enlarge women’s breasts. Apparently, though, customs duties on the beer were too high to be worth bringing the drink out of Bulgaria… until now. When Bulgaria joined the European Union, those duties were abolished and now European men have been flocking to Bulgaria to stock up on the beer for their wives/girlfriends. Don’t get your hopes up, guys.
• How to piss off people who enjoy craft beer
  Mike Seate in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote an article titled, "Beer snobs forget the true meaning of beer" wherein he bemoans the rising price of "exotic" beers and blames the "beer snobs" for this ("Is it just me, or has somebody forgotten that beer is supposed to be a workingman’s drink, as free from pretensions and airs as a kielbasa smothered in sauerkraut?"). This otherwise non-news item has been picked up and excoriated by the online beer community (here, here, here, commentary here and here, reflection here), which is pretty much what it set out to do. What’s the best way to get traffic, links, and attention? Write an inflammatory, controversial article/blog post trashing something popular.
• "Free Beer" picks up momentum (and I still don’t get it)
  The "Free" in Free Beer is "free as in speech" (it’ll still cost you, unfortunately) and is the open source beer I blogged about two years ago. I didn’t get it then, and I still don’t get it now: is it just a publicity thing? A statement on copyright? Because there’s a ton of beer recipes out there that are free for using, so what makes this one stand out? I guess I can’t get past the gimmick and see anything other than, well, a gimmick.

  At any rate, they’ve been picking up steam despite my doubts, and I predict we’ll be seeing more of them in the news this year.