Vermonters are observing their rites of spring – warm days blossom with floral dresses and rosy, bare chests, and by evening, sunburns for paler, more foolhardy revelers.

For casual tipplers and craftbrew dilettantes alike, spring also means bright, sunny beers best sipped fresh in the open air, whether the venue is your back porch, on the lake or in the garden, or at your favorite watering hole.

Over the last few weeks, Vermont’s brewmasters have been rolling out the season’s new releases. It's a fruity, citrusy batch that predictably forges new trails into IPA territory, with stops along the way for ciders, sours and saisons. Just in time for Memorial Day and the official (unofficial) start of summer.

Read on for a smattering of noteworthy new brews, listed by release date.

Hungry for a Hasselhoff Burger? The $34 patty is cooked well done and topped with ketchup, then served on the bathroom floor. "The celebrity price is in line with the celebrity experience," says a representative for Montpelier's Three Penny Taproom, which debuted a new spring menu today.

The source told Seven Days that the new menu was designed to keepThree Penny in line with popular New York restaurants, such as Guy Fieri's landmark Guy's Kitchen & Bar.

Starting today, Three Penny guests will be welcomed to "Flavor Town" with a new take on the cheese plate. Kraft Singles, Cheetos or Easy Cheese are each available for $9. Larger parties may want to indulge in all three for $15, served with a side of ketchup.

Waist watchers can stick to the salad menu. The Jell-O salad is composed of lime gelatin, canned pineapple and artisanal marshmallows, while the taco salad features Doritos and jarred salsa.

Since Three Penny is ultimately a beer destination, snacks and sides are an important addition to a can of Schlitz or Olde English 800. Irish Nachos make the most of our Blarney-kissin' cousins' cuisine with boiled waffle fries, Kilkenny jalapeños and a Guinness drizzle. An original dish, Pigs in a Biskit, features pigs-in-a-blanket, crusted with Chicken in a Biskit crackers.

One sweet snack is appropriate as a starter, side or dessert. A bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch will run you $6. Add milk for just $17 more.

We look forward to trying Three Penny's hip new fare soon, with or without a shirt.

Alice Waters will be visiting Vermont early next month. She'll speak at Sterling College's Dunbar Hall on April 3 at 6:30 p.m. But she isn't just a celebrity chef, restaurateur and Slow Food pioneer passing through on a press tour. Waters has New England connections: Her daughter, Fanny, attended the Mountain School in Vershire, and Waters herself has an honorary degree from Dartmouth College. 

Most importantly, she has friends in Vermont. The first leg of her tour will be under the guidance of famous food writer and sometime Northeast Kingdom resident Marian Burros. After her visit to Sterling, Waters will tour Burlington's Intervale Center with its community relations manager, Joyce Cellars.

Spearheading such events has been Cellars' job when other luminaries, such as Mark Bittman, came to town. But this visit will be special. According to Waters, "[Cellars] came to work at Chez Panisse when she was very young. She was my right arm."

Waters is not only a restaurant luminary but an activist: Her Edible Schoolyard Program has gained traction in bringing real food to K-12 schools, and she hopes to see the movement expand to schools and hospitals across the country. 

In anticipation of her whirlwind tour, we checked in with Waters about Vermont cuisine, food ethics and eating shoes.

SEVEN DAYS: What brings you to Vermont?
ALICE WATERS: I think there are a lot of things that bring me to Vermont. Sterling is certainly a place that I’ve heard about for a long time from Marian Burros. She just wants me to see the way the curriculum works, the way food is served, and I’m very, very interested in that, of course. 

I also have a very, very good friend, Joyce Cellars at the Intervale. She is connected with Slow Food Vermont, and they're very excited to have me come and sign books and talk the talk.

I guess I always have these big visions of what can happen there. I’ve thought for a very long time that Vermont is the state that is really ready for edible education in the public schools — to officially get [to a point] to feed all children real food for school lunch would be an irresistible model for this country. 

"60 Minutes" called her "the mother of Slow Food." Foodies know her as much for her work with public policy as her groundbreaking cookbooks. Yep, we're talking about Alice Waters,

With a recent surge in big names including Sandor Katz filling the instructor lists for sustainable food programs at Sterling College, it's not a big surprise that a talk by Waters, the woman behind Berkeley, Calif.'s world-famous Chez Panisse, is the college's latest coup.

Waters will appear at Sterling early next month as part of the school's Vermont’s Table Speaker Series. Past speakers have included ecologist and ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan and The Art of Fermentation author Sandor Katz. He'll teach a course in fermentation at Sterling in July.

Will Waters be Sterling's next visiting professor? It's unlikely, given the restaurateur's busy schedule of running her legendary restaurant and writing cookbooks such as The Art of Simple Food and In the Green Kitchen. Waters is also known for pioneering the Edible Schoolyard at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr., Middle School. That program led to the School Lunch Initiative, a national program that has influenced Vermont's own push for local food in schools.

Vermonters can see Waters on April 3 at 6:30 p.m. at Sterling's Dunbar Hall. The event will be free, but tickets must be presented at the door. Slow Food lovers can reserve seats and learn more about the event at sterlingcollege.edu.

While it's always exciting to read about the chefs and restaurants nominated for James Beard Foundation Awards, I'm particularly piqued by the bar programs, wine programs and beverage professionals who receive nods from the judges.

So it was both wonderful and gratifying to see Steve Wood, the owner of New Hampshire's Poverty Lane Orchards and Farnum Hill Ciders  nominated this year as an "Outstanding Wine, Spirits, or Beer Professional" semifinalist.

Wood is well known within the cider industry for his revival of heirloom apples, his exquisite hard ciders, and his boundless generosity with aspiring growers and cidermakers. More than one cidermaker has told me how Wood shared his knowledge freely with them — and it is extensive, honed over decades of running an orchard. Even though Wood might be thought of primarily as the owner of Farnum Hill, his invisible influence extends throughout the cider industry. Would we have as robust a New England cider scene without him? I doubt it.

Disclosure: Though I don't know him well, Wood is also my Poverty Lane neighbor, so I get to partake of his cider often. He has some stiff competition amongst the other 19 nominees: drinks writer/educator David Wondrich and Tales of the Cocktail founder Ann Tuennerman among them. We hope he makes the second cut. Go Steve!

When Sandor Katz, author of the James Beard Foundation Award-winning The Art of Fermentation, spoke at Sterling College last spring, he attracted a standing-room-only crowd. Now he's returning to the institution, this time as a teacher.

Katz, also known as Sandorkraut, will be at Sterling from July 7 through 18 to teach "Fermentation with Sandor Katz."

According to Christian Feuerstein, Sterling's director of communications, "He is going to be available to [help students] learn fermentation one on one." Topics covered will include vegetable fermentation; making tonic beverages; culturing molds; and fermenting oils, legumes, grains and nuts. Of course, the New York Times-bestselling author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved will include his namesake sauerkraut among the foods in which he shares his expertise.

In Good Taste, St. Albans

It used to be that January was the Vermont dining nadir. Everyone was light on both product and motivation to do much besides try to lose weight gained over the holidays.

Clearly, times have changed. I spent the weekend going to a different culinary event each night. If you missed out, keep these breaks from the winter doldrums in mind when they next appear.

Friday: In Good Taste, St. Albans

I could never have anticipated the crowd that clogged the St. Albans City Hall on Friday night. Clearly, Franklin County was starving for a good food event. The evening began at 5 p.m. By the time I got there after 6:30, 20 tasting tickets for $10 had been discounted to $5. According to the folks selling tickets, so many vendors had already sold out that it was only fair.

But there was still lots to learn.

I started with a sip of cucumber-flavored TreTap. The supplemented water is made from the byproducts of maple sugaring at Branon's West View Maples. Basically, it's SmartWater with a Vermont edge. It didn't taste like cucumber, but the ultra-pure liquid was a nice palate cleanser before feasting.

Nearby, students from Northwest Technical Center's culinary arts program were preparing a piquant steak tartare using meat donated by Highgate Center's Choiniere Family Farm.

I ended the evening with a flight of five different ice ciders from from Hall Home Place of Isle La Motte.

Surprisingly for this nondrinker, my favorite was the Sweet Six, which its makers describe as having a "brandy-like finish." What I liked more than the burn was the ideal blend of sweet and tart. The acid of some apples cut through the sticky sweetness of others. Too bad the six apples change each season. I may never taste a blend quite like that one again.

Saturday: Ramen Cook-Off, Shelburne

The following evening, my buddy Jack Thurston and I judged the first of three annual cooking contests held at Chef Contos Kitchen & Store, owned by another pal, Courtney Contos.

Since the store is small, entries were capped at seven. To keep things fair, we tasted each bowl anonymously labeled with a number. Three were Thai curry soups, not ramens, so, while tasty, they simply couldn't win.

One soup stood out clearly from the pack. It had the lip-glossing slick of collagen I was looking for in a well-salted broth. Just as the truck drivers in Tampopo insist, the balance of broth, noodles and meat was spot-on, too. And it turned out the winner had a familiar face.

Suzanne Podhaizer of Salt in Montpelier, former Seven Days food editor, turned out to be the ramen's creator. I hadn't realized at first taste that the soup was made not from pork but from goose, including braised meat and cracklings from the animals she helped raise (and slaughter) herself at a farm called Gozzard City in Cabot.

The destroyed barn Richmond last summer

Before most of us were awake on Monday, January 13, Beth Whiting and Bruce Hennessey of Maple Wind Farm had already received some very bad news. Just an hour and a half after the fire department arrived, their historic barn was declared a total loss.

Though the pair's home farm is in Huntington, an expansion in the summer of 2013 meant adding a Richmond property, including the barn that was destroyed.

The damage amounts to about $200,000, including refrigerators, washing tools, office space and 10,000 pounds of frozen vegetables.

Reached by phone this afternoon, Whiting was surprisingly upbeat. No people or animals were harmed in the fire and the farmers were able to sell their wares at the Burlington Farmers Market last weekend. Whiting says that although some poultry processing equipment was damaged in the fire, the farm remains on track to pass USDA inspection this winter. She calls the ability to rebuild to their own specifications a "silver lining."

Selling their own products will help cover some costs, but friends are helping out, too. David Zuckerman and Rachel Nevitt of Full Moon Farm in Hinesburg are supplying organic pork and vegetables for a fundraiser at Hinesburgh Public House on January 28. The dinner, served from 5 to 9 p.m., will consist of three courses, all for $25. Ben & Jerry's is donating dessert.

Vermont farmers will be in our thoughts tomorrow as we tuck into our Thanksgiving meals. And just in time for the holiday, Amanda Andrews and Mike Betit of Burlington's Tamarack Hollow Farm have something to be thankful for — they're moving to higher ground.

In a story last summer about the pitfalls of farming on the Burlington floodplain, Andrews articulately outlined the “urban farm adventure" on which she and her husband embarked after moving their farm from Wheelock in 2010. As of August, Tamarack Hollow had lost more than $100,000 this year alone to the flooding that crippled the growth of both plants and animals from the start.

Andrews was at her limit, even considering a career change. “What does seven years’ farming experience get you in the real world?” she wondered at the time. “You look through the job postings, and what you’d be qualified for is pretty slim.”

A cute rabbit standing back-to-back with a giant chef's knife. The new logo makes it clear that this is not your grandmother's Café Shelburne.

And you can get a taste of the locally focused French fare now. New chef-owners Bill Iliff and Weston Nicoll (right) began their soft opening last weekend. The restaurant is now welcoming diners, as long as they bring their own wine. Café Shelburne will open officially, complete with wine list by Lauren Taratoot, by November 15.

The wines will focus on bottles from the Loire Valley, which the chefs compare to Vermont, but with a warmer summer that allows the grapes to grow more delicious. The wines are predominantly biodynamic, but Nicoll says this is because "the small producers we want to get, that's just how they're doing it. That's how their grandfathers did it — there's just a word for it now."