Nora McGunnigle

Man, I am excited for Mardi Gras, especially since it looks like the option exists to drink amazing beer while enjoying the parades. I posted this info to the other blog I write for, but I wanted to put it on here too. The Avenue Pub has taken the first week of Mardi Gras to line up some great beer events. This is the weekend that the balcony is open to the public. They, of course, want their best beer customers up there and the best way to get them to show up and watch the parades with us is to line up some great beers. Drinking the beers will get you access to the balcony for the parades (first come first serve of course).  No problem! Friday Feb 10th Saint Arnolds night: Divine Reserve 11 & the rollout of their newest beer: Bitter Belgian. Krewe of Oshun parade start 6pm, by the pub by 8pm Click here for more info and to RSVP Saturday Feb 11th Stone Brewing & NOLA collaboration rollout:”Pour Me Somethin’ Mistah” on cask and in draft. Plus a couple of other good...

(Crossposted to the other blog I write for, NOLA Beer Guide .) First things first: BIG UPS to The Avenue Pub- owner Polly Watts and her amazing staff – Stene Isacsson, owner of Akkurat Bar & Restaurant in Stockholm, and Shelton Brothers Distributors for all their hard work to bring this event to not only New Orleans but to Louisiana, the South, the US. Nothing like this anywhere else in the country- this was totally a once in a lifetime opportunity and I am grateful to everyone’s role in making it happen. On Tuesday, the Avenue put on the Oppigårds Golden Ale and I gave that a try- a very pleasant, slightly hoppy, balanced, and drinkable beer. Delicious! I couldn’t make the Wednesday night tasting, but I did go back on Friday night and enjoyed several of the Swedish offerings, both upstairs and downstairs. The Balcony also had Cantillon Mamouche on draft as a special keg for a special weekend. Downstairs had a Jolly Pumpkin Maricaibo Especiale to enjoy. I started with the Nä...

So Tom and I had the opportunity to go investigate a brand spanking new brewery that is currently gathering resources and money and investors, etc. So the brewery, 40 Arpent, which right now is a guy named Michael, hosted this free tasting at a bar called The Rusty Nail, which I think is a really great idea. Got me excited about the stuff he's brewing.  He had a lager that was really quite phenomenal and a "Red Beans & Rice" beer that he hopes can be his flagship beer, and with some refining, I think it can be.  (The beer is actually called Keltic Kajun, but due to my irrational annoyance with spelling things unnecessarily with a "K" I will likely always refer to it as Red Beans & Rice beer.) His dunkleweizen and stout are also beers to be reckoned with. Anyway, an unexpectedly fun and informative evening with unexpectedly delicious beer. Michael was very busy making the rounds but was a great sport in answering all my various questions and I just love...

BIG NEWS- a few local New Orleans beer bloggers are joining up to create a NOLA beer website at:  http://nolabeerguide.wordpress.com/ . You may be asking yourself, why does New Orleans need this blog, given that there are several venues to find out about beer here?  There's a Facebook page for all of Louisiana, the major players tend to post updates on Facebook and Twitter, there are several beer bloggers on the scene, including yours truly and the Beer Buddha (who was the one who actually started up the NOLA Beer Guide and asked me to participate.) However, the hope is that this website will consolidate ALL of these points of information, so that we can most effectively get the word out to all New Orleans beer lovers. Since there are several of us posting, we don't need to worry about if someone gets slammed at work and can't get the time to update, or if someone's out of town, or whatever. I will still be posting here- about my personal beer tastings and ...