Nora McGunnigle

As we stand on the edge of Louisiana Craft Brewers Week, let us think of the breweries that have joined the ranks since this time last year - Courtyard Brewery, Mudbug Brewing. Broken Wheel, Flying Heart, Second Line, and Cajun Brewing - and rejoice.

Hey, all - I didn't do my post of the week last week because I wasn't feeling well at all so things got a little FUBARed. However, one of the things I was working on was pulling the schedule together for Louisiana Craft Brewers Weekend, happening September 12-19, which will run in the Gambit next week. (In the meanwhile, you can peep the schedule here . Let me know if you know of any corrections, updates, or cancellations.) In other news, my All About Beer Magazine piece got put up online , and Beer Advocate released the cover of this month's issue, and the cover story (Family Brewed) is my story!

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...

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

Matt Horney (Old Rail), me, Zac Caramonta (Gnarly Barley), and Josh Erickson (Chafunkta) during ACBW at the Avenue Pub. Bad Blogspot! It crashed and wiped out my previous draft of this blog post. However, I now suspect that it may have sucked, so it may be for the best.

The upstairs offerings of last night's Barrel Aged night at the Avenue Pub (photo courtesy of the Avenue Pub's FB page ) Got out yesterday to the Avenue Pub for the barrel aged event, and it was MAD JAM PACKED. Literally, the line for the upstairs bar's beers went out the door and down the stairs. I was able to grab an Evil Twin Double Barreled Jesus (though I was wondering if Evil Twin counts as American Craft Beer) and an Against The Grain London Balling barleywine aged in "Angel's Share" barrels previously used to age ruby port wine. It was a pretty interesting beer. I also got a chance to try one of Bayou Teche's special ACBW beers, Coteau Rodaire. I liked it a lot- it's a farmhouse/saison style aged in French Sauvignon Blanc barrels. Little bit of funk, very drinkable, but with a pleasant complexity.

Cookies from 40 Arpent's ribbon cutting ceremony last week. May Day! And that means that American Craft Beer Week is almost upon us. It is also Jazz Fest. And Savor American Craft Beer and Food Experience is happening in Washington DC. And a new brewery, Gnarly Barley, is opening. April was also pretty crazy with the Brew Dogs hitting town, Festival International happening in Lafayette, and a bunch of new restaurants opening and other restaurants expanding. I have a new gig! I'm writing features for Eater New Orleans . Some of them are straight up food writing, but I've also started a new recurring feature called Beer Here! which covers restaurants' beer lists, etc. In a testament to the tail-eating snake that is online media today, Todd Price of NOLA.com/Times Picayune did an aggregate story on the work I'm doing on a primarily aggregate website. (Aggregate: pretty much where you round up cool stories and direct your audience to them - much like this blog...

Drinking a NOLA Brewing Rebirth Pale Ale while watching the Roots of Music band, which will be receiving a portion of the proceeds of the beer. I'm heading to Shreveport today to check out Great Raft and Red River Brewing, but before I go, a few things to share: Brewsday Tuesday article about Bayou Teche's collaboration beer with French brewery La Bambelle, Bayoust, which will be released at Lafayette's Festival International. Article on the founding of New Orleans' Girls Pint Out on the Alcohol Professor website. Great article in the NOLA Defender by Sam Nelson about the Cajun Fire folks.

Happy Thursday! It's a quiet week for my own work, but here's my second Oktoberfest column in the Gambit . Hope everyone is ramping up for Oktoberfest at Deutsches Haus or checking out the gorgeous Franconian lagers at the Avenue Pub. Prost! I did notice that Eater NOLA has been sharing many of my stories and calling me the "beer whisperer" which is pretty funny. There are a bunch of State of Louisiana enforcement shenanigans regarding serving homebrew beer at non-profit/charitable events going on right now. A lot of the activity seems to be in Facebook threads in the Brasseurs a la Maison homebrew club  out of Baton Rouge right now, but it seems that the state ATC commissioner is refusing to grant homebrew event permits due to issues of people indirectly paying for their beer as well as health and safety, by enforcing the provisions of the 2010 law that say that homebrew can only be served at homebrew club meetings to homebrew club members. It's a pretty n...