State beer panel has a heady task
Prost!
Washington brewers are toasting a new state government commission that aims to boost the sale of local ales and lagers and tap new markets.
The Washington Beer Commission will represent microbreweries. The state is home to renowned breweries that use locally grown ingredients including Cascade hops.
Commission members – appointed by the Washington State Agriculture Department – come from six microbreweries, including Mark Irwin, of Northern Lights Brewing Co. in Spokane.
The commission’s research and promotion activities will be funded by a 10 cent per barrel assessment up to 10,000 barrels per brewery. The commission will be similar to other commodity groups such as the Washington Wheat Commission.
Toulouse, France
Airbus begins final certification
An Airbus A380 took off Monday for Asia on the first in a final series of test flights intended to lead to airworthiness certification for the superjumbo program that has been hit by a costly two-year production delay.
The A380 took off from Toulouse, southern France, bound for Seoul, with a stopover in Singapore planned on each leg of the round trip.
The four remaining trips in the test flight schedule, ending Nov. 30, are designed to put the 555-seater A380 through 150 hours of flights under the kind of operating conditions it will experience with airlines,
Bergsma said.
Houston
Facility launches first test rocket
A remote West Texas spaceport being built and bankrolled by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos launched a test rocket Monday for the first time.
“There was a launch, a one- or two-minute event,” Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roland Herwig said from the agency’s office in Oklahoma City. He had no details.
The exact nature of the 6:30 a.m. launch or the type of spacecraft was not known.
A Houston-based spokesman for Blue Origin, the Bezos-owned firm developing the private commercial space venture, did not immediately respond to a telephone inquiry from The Associated Press.