Maybe you’ve noticed: A whole bunch of your favorite breweries were pitching the same imperial stout this winter. What’s going on?

What’s going on is Black Is Beautiful, a nationwide initiative begun by Weathered Souls Brewing, in San Antonio, Texas, whereby breweries all agree to brew the same basic recipe and donate the proceeds to organizations working to support equity and Black, indigenous and other people of color. The imperial stout is a doozy, packing 10% ABV and a basic recipe that calls for flavoring with chocolate and caramel malts.

Of course, while everyone is starting with the supplied recipe, breweries are encouraged to add in their own little flare. At Austin Street and Blaze Brewing, you’ll find they’ve collaborated on a toasted coconut version. Bissell Brothers went with a blend of madeira-wine-barrel-aged porters and stouts, presented in an elegant bottle. Both are donating proceeds to the NAACP. At Allagash, you can find the stout in 12-ounce cans and brewed with flint corn for a slightly sweet flavor. Proceeds go to Indigo Arts and Maine Inside Out. The flint corn was even grown by members of the New American Farmers project, which focuses on finding farming opportunities for new Mainers coming here from other nations as immigrants or refugees.

Many breweries quickly sold out of their runs. Others are still ramping up production. Ask for it wherever you’re out and about, or find the participating breweries at www.blackisbeautiful.beer. In total, more than 1,200 breweries have signed on to the project, in all 50 states and in 22 countries. Cheers to that!

Don’t tell former Mayor Paul LePage, but Waterville now has the first adult-use cannabis shop in Kennebec County, with the opening of Sweet Dirt’s location at 475 Kennedy Memorial Drive. Ownership and staff held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on December 7 alongside the Kennebec Valley and Mid-Maine Chambers of Commerce. Pretty posh!

But Sweet Dirt are hardly rookies. The certified-organic growers have been in the medical field since 2015 and on January 21 opened Maine’s largest cannabis greenhouse, a 32,800-square-foot facility in Eliot, Maine, which will employ up to 30 and yield as much as 12,000 pounds of cannabis annually. That should help with Maine’s current supply problem.

Even though adult-use cannabis didn’t open for business until October, and with limited supplies at that, the industry still crested $4 million in sales by the end of December. Leading the way was flower sales, which closed the year just under $3 million, with concentrates and infused products growing less quickly.

While the pandemic has affected every business a little differently, Lone Pine is one brewery that has seen nothing but expansion over the past year.

In December, they installed a new canning system from Codi, based in Golden, Colorado (hmmm, why does that sound familiar?), that had them pretty excited. The fresh new line allows for a higher rate of packaging speed, helps with quality control, and keeps them from wasting time and beer. They also hope to experience less dissolved oxygen getting into the cans, which can lead to muted flavors and a shorter shelf life.

Then, just after the new year, Lone Pine added five 80-barrel fermenters to its Gorham facility, along with a new 80-barrel brite tank, which is where you can do rapid carbonation or a secondary fermentation. As you might expect, the addition of 99,200 pints of capacity is pretty dang significant. Lone Pine might even call it “exponential” expansion.

Nor is their need for expansion a big surprise, given the run of great beers they’ve been releasing, including the brand-new double-IPA Diamond Unicorn and the success they’ve had with their Holy Donut variants, all based on popular Holy Donut varieties like Chocolate Covered Strawberry Imperial Stout and the Fresh Lemon Glaze Imperial Sour.

Despite a raft of competition in the Portland area, Lone Pine has exploded in the past year and shows no signs of slowing down.