Nora McGunnigle

That's right, it's Nuit Belge Week ! The big event itself is on Friday night, but there are great food and beer events featuring participating restaurants and out of town breweries happening all week. Here are the ones I know about: (And please do let me know if I've missed any)

A profile of me and my story in this month's Beer Advocate Man, I have not updated my blog with my new articles and stuff for ages. Let's fix that, shall we? First of all, just a reminder that I've started a Tumblr page , mostly to house links of my stories, but also to reblog stuff I think is cute/funny/interesting and post photos. If you Tumbl, check it out! Beer Advocate's artistic imaging of Hattiesburg The opening page of my Beer Advocate story on Hattiesburg I have two big stories out this past month. One is a profile of Hattiesburg Mississippi as a "Beer Destination" for Beer Advocate Magazine, and the other is an analysis of the impact of craft beer in five cities in the five states that surround the Gulf here: Houston, New Orleans, Hattiesburg, Birmingham, and the Tampa Bay area. This was really interesting to write and, I hope, interesting to read. My Gambit pieces this past month or so have been pretty varied: Great ...

All About Beer posted a roundup of beer writer and brewers, and other beer industry folks' takes on the New Yorker cover above . I'm one of the writers that's quoted , though with company like Sam Calagione, Greg Koch, Ray Daniels, and others, I don't know if anyone will notice! I don't mind though, it's an honor to be included in such a stellar lineup. Check it out though, it's a pretty interesting discussion. In local news...

Got it! Starting in one hour, you will be able to enjoy these fine beers at the Courtyard Brewery: NOTE: These will rotate throughout the weekend as kegs blow - they won't all be on at the same time.  Blanche de Bruxelles Saison Dupont Cuvee Dry Hopping BFM 225 Sour Saison Anchor Lager Stillwater Stateside Saison Gnarly Barley Brewing Korova Milk Porter North Coast Old Rasputin Saint Arnold Divine Reserve 14 New Belgium Le Terroir Stone IPA Stone Hibiscusicity Green Flash Le Freak Lagunitas IPA Lagunitas lil Sumpin' Wild Green Flash Hop Odyssey Cedar Plank Founders Breakfast Stout and last (but definitely not least) Great Raft Brewing's At Arms Length IPL. See ya there!

This lady is dressed up in her finest birthday Fräulein wear (at NOOT), your argument is invalid. Well, cats and kittens, it's been a crazy few weeks. After Louisiana Craft Brewers Week, I attended the National Beer Wholesalers Association's annual conference and then flew out to Denver to check out GABF. You can read a brief overview of those two events here , and I've got some photos of GABF up on Tumblr here . Scott Wood at Courtyard Brewery, set to open this week

OK, I know it was just Mardi Gras, but cowboy up and tackle St. Patrick's Day head on! I live in the Irish Channel so the parade on Saturday (3/15) is walking distance, as are the homes of several friends/neighbors who will be hosting get-togethers that day. I'm hoping to get my hands on a friend's homebrew, it's been a while since I had the privilege of enjoying it. I have other St. Patrick's Day tips here!

Did a photo shoot at Restaurant August for an upcoming article in Southern Brew News Hope everyone had a great Halloween! I know the weekend ahead is still the holiday weekend, sort of, so stay safe and drink well. I am sort of a fuddy-duddy when it comes to Halloween - living in Salem, MA for 5 years can do that to a person. But at least now I enjoy being Halloween-adjacent, if not quite celebratory.

Saint Arnold beer dinner at Domenica last week I've got a new post up on The Alcohol Professor about my GABF experience . It's been a while since I had the opportunity to contribute to them, but hopefully I'll have more stuff published there soon. Almanac Brewing's founder Jesse Friedman also published a post about a brewer's take on GABF , which was cool. This week's Brewsday Tuesday focuses on the two new breweries in Shreveport , Great Raft and Red River, who have just been licensed by the state to start brewing. ( NOLA.com also ran a piece on the new Shreveport breweries) I also had a post published about a couple beer dinners happening this week - last night's at Dat Dog and tonight's NOLA Brewing dinner at Delmonico.

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'd heard rumors of a new brewery coming around in New Orleans called the Courtyard Brewery. I'd seen some tweets from the brewer but wasn't sure what it was all about, except that it was going to be in New Orleans. I saw mention that Courtyard was finalizing a location a few weeks ago, and I sent a direct message asking about it. Not only did the question get answered (more info on that below) but I was warmly invited to come by and try their beers. Scott Wood and his wife Lindsay live in Lakeview where they brew beer and are raising their son. Lindsey is from Louisiana and Scott is from San Diego, and when they got together they moved to New Orleans. When they first moved back they lived in an apartment complex in the French Quarter, which had a communal courtyard, which is where they started brewing more than three years ago. Thus, the name. They moved to Lakeview and have much more space and have a six-tap draft system for their test batches, which I was lucky enough ...