It's been close to a month since I've done one of these, but seems non-release news has been relatively sparse through the start of the holiday season. But I've saved up enough articles to fill up my carrier, so let's get to it.

Mark DeWolf from The Chronicle Herald in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada tries to bridge the gap between the beer-drinkers of the world and the wine-drinkers of the world by providing a guide that recommends beer styles based on one's preferred wine style choice.

The folks at Vinepair sure like their lists, and this week is no exception, as they list ten of the best Winter Warmer-style beers, which is appropriate, given the cold weather that has pushed through the U.S.A. recently. A number of the beers on this list have widespread or national/near-national distribution, so you should be able to find at least a couple of these in any area.

Vinepair also discusses the potentially-charged question of whether the craft beer scene suffers from a lack of diversity.

Draft Magazine getting into the listicle format with their selections of the 25 best beers of 2016. Like with so many of these lists, the beers almost completely come from small breweries, and likely were made in small batches, so good luck if you don't live near one of the breweries listed.

In the Thanksgiving edition of the news round-up, I mentioned that Avery Brewing Company elected to restructure its beer line-up to focus on barrel-based beers. Firestone Walker announced earlier this fall that it would discontinue a special line of beers, and New Belgium just announced an overhaul to their line-up, eliminating some core beers and creating some new ones.

Finally, one of the very first Six-Packs of News mentioned information from the Brewers Association noting that there were over 4200 breweries across the United States. Well, the 2016 Craft Beer Year in Review reported that there are now over 5,000 breweries in operation in the United States. The Association also notes that over 99 percent of these breweries are "small and independent".