Thursday Linkday!

The NOLA taproom opened this week!

I have been keeping busy working on a couple pieces for the Gambit and Where Y'At as well as hustling doing pitches for other publications, which is why I haven't been able to write a blog post about the awesome Bayou Teche beer dinner I had at Sainte Marie Brasserie last week (a week ago today, actually.) I'm really hoping to get that up with some pictures in the near future, because it was pretty kickass. The chef, Kristen Essig, was so warm and welcoming and so excited about the pairings! It was great.

ANYWAY, for your links du jour:


I have assembled my Louisiana Craft Brewer Week (LaCBW) schedule of events! It will also be running on the Gambit website, but the one on this site will be updated regularly, as I continue to receive information on new events, cancelled events, changed events... keep an eye on it.

This week's Brewsday Tuesday column spotlights a couple of new beers coming to market from local breweries: Chafunkta Brewing's Kingfish, Covington Brewhouse's Anonymous IPA, and Abita's French Connection and Macchiato Espresso milk stout. Intriguing!

Also in the Gambit this week, the talented Megan Braden-Perry Capone does a great three question interview with Scott Wood of Courtyard Brewing. Yay!

In the interview, Scott mentions the Zwanze event happening at the Avenue Pub on Saturday, September 14. This will be my third year attending and I personally cannot wait. Todd Price also did a writeup in NOLA.com. (I would also like to point out that I did a very similar story a couple of months ago when Avenue was selected as a Zwanze site.)

Also happening on Saturday is the Deutsches Haus Summer Beer Fest. Beer, food, fun, and it supports a great organization! Check out the details on their website. You can also get a coupon off of food there.

In news about other news outlets talking about local beer, the NOLA Defender has a great piece on Bayou Teche's newest release, the Cocodrie Tripel IPA. Nice interview with Bayou Teche's founder and front man, Karlos Knott, discussing the ingredients of the beer as well as Bayou Teche's distribution strategies.

I got an email from an enterprising new blogger on Monday morning about the legal notice served to NOLA Brewing from Toho Co. Ltd. in Japan, who owns the rights to MechaGodzilla, and is suing NOLA for the name and image for their MechaHopzilla double IPA. I reached out to Kirk, who said at that point (on Monday) they were still waiting to actually be served the complaint (unsure if that has happened since then) but he did mention that "we applied for the trademark the day we put our mark into use, and are awaiting the results from the UPTO." Of course, by yesterday, it was all over the place, but way to get the scoop, Tyler! Go check out his blog - looks like it focuses on beer reviews and news.

In controversy news, here's a great article about the Pumpkin Beer Wars. I don't like pumpkin beers, so this is pretty amusing to me in general. There's some discussion about the much-bemoaned "season creep" as well as the explosion of number pumpkin beers on the market. Also some Twitter snark controversy.

Feel free to send me links to include in my weekly roundup! I'm always on the lookout.