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When summer was winding down, my family and I headed up north for a friend’s wedding in Door County, Wis. Aside from my sister getting a kick out of the goats grazing on the roof of Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant & Butik, we also got a chance to try Island Orchard Cider, a French-style hard cider that is produced in Ellison Bay, Wis.

Clearly the readers of Beverage Industry are fans of kombucha as Clearly Kombucha won the August New Product of the Month poll. The organic beverage obtained 21 percent of the votes. Voting took place between Sept. 8 and 18.

SABMiller plc, London, and Leuven, Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) released responses to press speculation regarding a recent approach made by AB InBev to SABMiller about a potential merging of the two companies.

Anyone who knows me well knows my affection for documentary films. Almost every weekend I can be found combing through Netflix to find something new to learn. Just recently a 2011 documentary titled “Ken Burns: Prohibition” caught my eye.

Various robotic concepts and designs have been developed and applied in many industries for almost a century.

I recently returned from a vacation in Southern California, where I mixed in some work between Disneyland, whale watching and playing in the Pacific Ocean. After watching my 19-year-old son and the rest of Chicago Danube Swabians — a German folk-dancing group — participate in a Landerstrachtenfest in Anaheim, we got the chance to explore California and sample a few beverages, too.

As a new mom, I have learned to embrace the phrase multi-tasking. I did not think that I would have perfected the morning ritual of singing “Pop Goes the Weasel,” applying makeup and rocking a baby at the same time, but I have. Although beverage-makers don’t need to include nursery rhymes in their product formulations, they are doing their own type of multi-tasking.

As the fall season fast approaches, it seems as though the readers of Beverage Industry are looking forward to incorporating whisky into their drinking rotation.

How to market to millennials? It’s a question that I’ve heard buzzing about the industry since I started four months ago.

Attending my first IFT Annual Meeting and Tradeshow at Chicago’s McCormick Place on July 12 was quite an interesting and engaging experience.