Your favorite beer may have just gotten a makeover. To those wandering the suds store in vain searching for those classic pyramid-sporting, Tintin-esque brews, listen up: Pyramid Hefeweizen will henceforth be known as Haywire Hefeweizen (above left), and Pyramid Apricot Ale is now Audacious Apricot Ale. Pyramid Breweries, America's 11th largest brewing company and fifth largest craft brewer, just announced this "revitalized brand positioning," and we're pretty surprised by the assertive redesign.

We're not alone. "Do they make beer or energy drinks?" quipped one BeerAdvocate user. Others, however, are more blasé: At Charlotte, N.C.'s Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, which stocks over 200 beers, general manager Daniel Parks remarked, "I don't think it will change [sales] one bit."

Typically reserved brewers have been shaking it up a bit of late: Sierra Nevada named a new year-round brew Torpedo IPA, a step up from their unadorned line of Pale Ale, Porter, Stout and Wheat. In Pyramid's case, this may be due to a recent buyout by flamboyantly designed Magic Hat's parent company, Independent Brewers United. (Pyramid did not return several requests for comment). To us, Haywire and Audacious sound like sheer marketing, uh, audacity.

Will you miss the Pyramids of the past the way we will?

The point of fast-food franchises is instant familiarity--every outlet serving the same food under the same sign in essentially the same building. But McDonald's has been messing with that paradigm, opening new restaurants that are hard to recognize as the home of Ronald and the Big Mac. Viva McDonald's recently opened on the Las Vegas Strip, tearing down a 25-year-old golden arches to rebuild a slick new restaurant. The arch is still there--at least one, anyway--stretched as a marquee above a row of 20-foot wide video screens. Inside, there's something of the Quonset hut design of a Chipotle, along with even more screens, all broadcasting McDonald's own in-house TV channel. You can even get a latte and use wi-fi!

Not enough change for you? How about the McDonald's with no branding at all, not even the name. In Tokyo, the fast-food megalith has opened several small restaurants named, simply, Quarter Pounder. There's not an arch in sight--the black-and-red decor looks more like a bar or nightclub and even the wrappers are redesigned, streamlined and logo-free. However, don't get your hopes up about a chic new shame-based No-I-Am-Not-a-McDonald's: The stores are open as part of a promotion for the quarter pounder, which was not previously available in Japan.

As you may have heard, after years of growth that kept them on track for world domination, in recent months global coffee phenomenon Starbucks suddenly hit a few stumbling blocks. Back in February, they closed their stores and retrained their employees on how to make the perfect shot of espresso. Yesterday, in response to critics who say that their beans are over-roasted, they introduced a new roast called Pike Place, named after the iconic market in Seattle, the city where they first started out.

They handed out free samples of this new roast yesterday at 12 noon to passersby and have scattered free coffee cards in daily newspapers all across the country. The clip you see above is from Mahalo Daily and in it, they capture reactions to the new coffee from Starbucks.

Have you tried the new roast? If you have, what do you think?

The Wall Street Journal was able to get a sneak peek at Chowhound's new interface, which will be relaunched in the next month or so by CNET, which acquired the message board back in March. Unfortunately, for us, there isn't a screenshot for us to check out yet, but the WSJ fills in a lot of blanks that Jim Leff, Chowhound.com's founder, left out when we first heard about the deal.

Chowhound will not only get a software upgrade, but it will become part of a CNET food website called Chow.com. Though the old Chowhound site will still be accessible, the new one is aiming to attract more people from across the country, not just in big cities. One of the biggest changes is that, instead of being able to post anonymously, anyone who wishes to post will have to register.

CNET says that it doesn't want to alienate any of the old users, which is an understandable position because the huge foodie community is the main reason it purchased the site in the first place. Whether it will happen or not, even though Jim Leff is still working on the site behind the scenes, remains to be seen.