Nora McGunnigle

Sorry I haven't been able to update this week! I was busy at the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience (NOWFE) over the weekend and the life stuff this week. I did publish my Brewsday Tuesday column at the Gambit though!  It has been pointed out to me that I didn't include much for the Northshore, but I will be rectifying that with an article I'll be writing for the Northshore magazine Inside Northside for their Sept/Oct issue. Exciting!

And I feel fine. Thanks for asking! Anyway, the whole end of the Mayan calendar is coming up this week and will tie into 2 beer events that I hope we all live to see. First of all, I'd be nervous about this, because the monks of the Abbaye Sint Sixtus are releasing its beer geek Holy Grail, Westvleteren XII, for the first time EVER for sale outside the monastery itself. They SAY it's to finance repairs to the abbey, but the apocalyptic timing seems TOO coincidental. Anyway, this one time only situation has apparently been a bit of a challenge for the distributors, since the monks insisted that the 6 pack (plus 2 tasting glasses) cost no more than $84.99 for the consumer, and that the boxes not be broken up and sold individually. Here are the retailers in Louisiana who will have them on 12/12/12: Whole Foods, Baton Rouge Aquistapace’s Grocery, Covington Whole Foods (Veterans), Metarie Stein’s Deli, New Orleans Whole Foods (Arabella Station), New Orleans The second...

Chef Lopez and Root's management staff have decided to have the one dinner in August so they can really focus on it, and it will be on August 27 (not the previously stated date of two weeks previous). AUGUST 27!  BE THERE! SO THEY WILL DO MORE! I've changed my previous post to reflect the accurate information.

After the Times-Picayune article by Todd Price came out profiling me as a beer blogger and Root as a restaurant that valued the pairing of beer with fine food, we (me and the guys at Root) came together to talk about promoting/expanding/improving their beer menu. Root decided to host a beer dinner on August 27th. They invited me to choose the beer pairings based on the menu that Chef Lopez put together! Obviously a huge honor for me as well as an extremely fun project. See below for the menu with the pairings. Many of the courses chosen are Root's most lauded dishes - the stars of their menu. Although I was given free reign to request any beer that is distributed in this market, I wanted to show how their beer menu as it is now complements the regular food menu. The dinner will $75 per person, not inclusive of tax and gratuity. The beer will be served in five ounce portions. Reservations will be available by phone (504-252-9480) only for seatings at 6:15, 6:30, 6:45, 8:30,...

So, although I have about 3 cases of beer from Florida, I've been obsessed with obtaining a beer called Brux which is a collaboration between Russian River Brewing and Sierra Nevada. Because Sierra Nevada is distributed here in Louisiana (and, um, everywhere else in the country), this beer is able to get in this market. However, not a lot (allegedly), so there's been a run on it. Right after I heard about the beer, I went to Stein's after work to pick some up. There weren't any bottles out on the shelves but when I asked Andre, he brought one out from the back. "One per customer," he said. I asked if I could buy one and if Tom could buy one, and was denied. I think they may have milked the "last bottle sold" thing, as I heard that the Beer Buddha got the last bottle on Friday, but then heard about other folks buying bottles through the weekend. It's all a game, a show. Having bought my bottle, I heard that it's a beer meant to continue ...

Last week was the much anticipated Louisiana launch of the well-regarded San Diego brewery Green Flash . I'd been looking forward to it, especially since I'd had only limited exposure to it before moving-I think MA only had West Coast IPA, their flagship. The Avenue Pub did a three day rollout between June 19 and 21. Tom and I showed up on the last day of the rollout, when all the beers (even the bottles) were available for tasting. We each got a tasting ticket (5 tastes for $12) and proceeded to sample the list. Funny story- I started using the Untappd app recently and I started checking in all the beers we were sampling - since I was checking in both our beers and they were small amounts, I was doing so fairly rapidly. After the 4th or 5th check in, I got a message from my friend the Beer Buddha , saying, "Nora, slow down. Seriously!" Oops! I explained the logistics, got made fun of a little bit. On to the beers! Le Freak! First up: I had the Le Freak a...

I've been to my share of high end beer dinners over the years. It was Will Meyers and the chefs at Cambridge Brewing Company that showed me how perfectly and skillfully beers could be paired with food. When we visited Northern California and had lunch at the esteemed French Laundry, our sommelier picked a great pairing of beers to complement Thomas Keller's food. When we moved to New Orleans, we enjoyed beer dinners at Donald Link's Calcasieu and Nathanial Zimet's Boucherie. They've all been great, and I've learned something important about beer and food at each one. I have never been to a beer dinner like the one I attended this past Thursday night at Coquette. When Jeff Schwartz, bar manager of Coquette, told me that when he and Chef Michael Stoltzfus sat down to plan the menu for the beer dinner, he realized that although beer can do almost anything wine can do and bette r , forcing a beer dinner into the wine dinner format does a disservice to how fu...

So, when we were over at Coquette a couple of weeks ago , we got to talking with the bar manager/beer guy Jeff Schwartz about beer and food and pairings, and he let slip that Coquette was planning on doing a beer dinner in May. They've been working with the Global Beer Portfolio through Crescent Crown to develop their beer list and to put something together that really showcases the great beer they have and the great talent in Coquette's kitchen.  After the craziness of Jazz Fest, Jeff emailed me to let me know a little more about what they are planning. I really liked his thought process on it, so I'm just going to quote him: When we sat down to drink beers and talk about this dinner, things were flowing well when I hit upon a concern I have about pairing dinners. Beer and cocktail dinners tend to have this mindset where it has to be just like wine. For legitimacy reasons, I suppose. And don't get me wrong, I'm pretty much convinced beers can do almost any...

Today, tasting a Belgian beer with low ABV! (4.5%) It's a witbier, (specifically a farmer's beer called "Witteke") which is not usually my favorite style, but I gotta say, this example is actually pretty tasty. Awesome on a warm day. A pale straw yellow, unfiltered beer brewed with orange peel and coriander, the spice and citrus notes are present in the nose and taste, along with the flavors from the yeast which is typical of the style. This is one of those beers that you can totally drink tons of on hot summer days all day long and it would taste refreshing and not get you too hammered. The spice/lemon/yeast taste is definitely there, but it's not overbearing or cloying. It drinks crisp and clean and is thirst quenching. I'm pretty pleased about it! Definitely a nice surprise and I'm sure we'll be drinking it this summer.

1) I got interviewed by the Beer Wench!  Hooray! Check it out! 2) I'm judging a homebrew competition in Hattiesburg, MS in Saturday.  It's a beer adventure.  A beer-venture, if you will. It's at the Keg & Barrel , which looks to be a most excellent place to drink.  Doesn't look like a formal taste evaluation or anything, but I am anticipating a lot of fun.  Beer blogger partner in crime The Beer Buddha will be there as well. 3) Three new (to me) beers I have tried and enjoyed this week: Dieu de Ciel - Corne du diable (Horn of the Devil), De Koninck (flagship beer of the De Koninck brewery), which Michael Jackson describes as: "De Koninck is soft that it slips down with soothing sociability; so tangy and perfumy that each glass invites another. I lost an afternoon in that bar, and never found it again." The third was the new Sierra Nevada-Dogfish Head collaboration called Life & Limb , which I quite like.  I've had it in the bottle and ...

Had a couple super awesome beers, as usual, last night at the Avenue Pub . Cask Ale was Brooklyn Brewing Pennant Ale, which is one of my favorite Brooklyn beers (not available widely here, sadly) and it is just EXCELLENT on cask. Also amazing: Mikkeller Drink in the Sun, a hoppy kolsch at only 2.3% ABV. It is SO good and SO drinkable and simply one of the best session beers I have ever had on this side of the Atlantic. We loved it. We managed to sneak in a couple from the Lowlands as well: Draeckenier from De Proefbrouwerij in Belgium,a smooth drinking tripel with a lovely complexity and subtlety. Also a Christoffel Bier, a German style pilsener from a Dutch brewery called Bierbrouwerij Sint Christoffel B.V. Really nice. Good work, Polly & Co!

Thanks to the tireless work of the beer leaders in the Greater New Orleans area, there are some excellent beers coming to market here in the coming weeks and months! On August 17, Ommegang Brewing is debuting at the Avenue Pub. This is a beer I've had access to up in New England, and I'll be happy to see it again in bars and stores. The rollout event will be taking place at the Avenue Pub and promises "a lot of great beers including just one keg of their special release Aphrodite and one sneak peak keg of a new brew from Duvel." News just broke on a few more newcomers to the market: Stillwater Artisanal Ales , a " gypsy " brewer based in the Baltimore area. Their website is a Blogger blog format (like this one) so it's a little awkward to navigate, but the beers look awesome and seem well reviewed on BA. They definitely seem like they have an exciting approach to brewing so I will cut them some slack on how they message, heh. Also "gypsy brewer...

So, summer in New Orleans. It's damn hot and you need a good summer beer (or variety thereof) to get you through it. Last night I tried some interesting summer-appropriate beers (at the Avenue Pub, 'course.) First up: NOLA's Hurricane Saison dryhopped with Grains of Paradise. An interesting cask ale. I really like this year's batch of their Saison, which is excellent for the weather already, and the grains of paradise added a earthy spiciness to balance the belgian yeast flavors. Next up: I was intrigued by the new Brooklyn Brewing "The Concoction" which I guess is based on a cocktail called the Penicillin from some schmancy cocktail bar up in NYC. It's a scotch based cocktail, and the beer interpretation is straight up BANANAS. There aren't actually bananas or banana flavor or aroma in this beer, but that's probably the only thing missing from the ingredient list. It's brewed with a peat smoked malt, which gives it a very smoky finish, a...

Over the causeway and through the woods... Tom and I went to Mandeville to pick up some excellent beers being donated for the Beers Not Bullets fundraiser that's happening THIS FRIDAY ( Have you got your tickets yet??? ). Driving across the causeway always makes me feel so sleepy. Doubly so on the way back after having stopped at the Barley Oak Old World Draught House . The Barley Oak is a big supporter of the event, so I've been going back and forth with them via email about sponsorship stuff. I was very pleased to have the opportunity to go visit the place after all our communication! The location was beautiful and it was an ideal day to go. It's right on the edge of the lakeside so it was just blue sky and water as far as the eye could see. We ate and drank inside, but it was breezy enough to enjoy a beer out on the patio in the shade very comfortably. Tom said that it reminded him of an English pub- especially the wallpaper that covered about half of the interior ...

I had a couple really good beers this evening at da Avenue Pub. Very different but extremely delicious. First was the Rogue Brutal Bitter. Balanced but very flavorful, like an amped up ESB. I ended up getting a growler of it to take home. (hooray growlers!) An interesting beer to say the least. It's a cross between the hoppiness of an IPA and the smoothness of an ESB. Apparantly in recent releases it's been renamed "Brutal IPA" which I think is misleading, because as IPAs go, it's not brutal at all. "Brutal Bitter" sums up the style quite nicely, a bitter with some West Coast OOMPH. A delightful discovery! The other beer of note that I had was the Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus, a raspberry lambic from the very highly regarded Cantillon brewery in Belgium. These people make amazing beers, and I hope to drink more of them in the future. This particular beer is incredibly sophisticated, complex, and exploding with fruit notes and funk and amazing flav...

So, for the Wednesday night tasting at the Avenue Pub, things got ramped up in honor of American Craft Beer Week. 10 different beers from teeny tiny breweries were available to sample - 6 samples for $18. The breweries represented: Saint Somewhere in Tarpon Springs, Florida. According to Polly's tasting notes, "The brewer, Bob Sylvester, was a long time homebrewer that started selling his stuff a few years back; I'm pretty certain he still has a "day job" Jolly Pumpkin out of Dexter, Michigan. They focus on using open fermentation, which provides a theme of general funk and sourness in their beers. Delicious funk. Dieu De Ciel , a brasserie/brewpub in Montreal, with some amazing beers. They are... not American, but they are definitely "nano" and I believe that they've sent some great stuff to the Avenue Pub and offered to do so again, and this is not the kind of beer you say no to. (this is just the impression I got, though. I might be mak...

OK, well, it's been a while since I last updated, and that's my bad. This week has been a pretty nice beer week (although I was unable to participate in NOLA Brewing's Easter Keg Hunt on Sunday due to my mom's visit.) We finally cracked into our bottle of Kwak that we'd had in our fridge for a couple months, used the Kwak glassware and drank it outside in the cool night air. I like Kwak- it's a very low-key Belgian that isn't fancy or funky, and smooth drinking despite the 8.1% ABV. Tom has fond memories of it from his time living in Belgium and it's made Kwak a sentimental favorite for us both. The Avenue Pub has had some fun stuff- they just finished a cask series from NOLA Brewing over the last 3 weeks with their Blonde Ale dryhopped with 3 different hops: Sorachi hops last night, Citra hops last week, and Simcoe the week before that. We enjoyed them all, but I think the Sorachi one was the best. (though that could be because it's the most rece...

The Goose Island Matilda (Belgian Strong Style Pale Ale brewed with Brettnomyces) is really, really, really awesome. Not really brett-y, the sourness/funk is subtle and incredibly balanced and delicious. Well done!

So, yay, Ohio beer that I can't get in Louisiana! Acquired: Great Lakes Commodore Perry IPA, Chatoe Rogue First Growth Wet Hop Ale, Goose Island Winter Mild, Dogfish Head Raison d'Etre, and a few Goose Island Reserve Ales: Sofie, Matilda, and Pere Jacques. Have not busted into the Goose Island Matilda yet, but here are some quick thoughts on the ones that were sampled: Great Lakes Commodore Perry IPA : a solid, tasty IPA. Hoppy with citrus notes. Very drinkable and a beer I almost always reach for when I come visiting this part of the world. Apparently Great Lakes makes a small batch of a Christmas Ale that is supposed to be amazing, but we couldn't find it. Sad! But we had others to drink so sadness was tempered. Dogfish Head Raison d'Etre : I was feeling nostalgic for this while watching Brewmasters (though I would have been more psyched to see Indian Brown Ale). A Belgian Strong Dark Ale. Dried fruit aromas and sweetness on the tongue, balanced by a nice hopp...

Last night we hosted a beer tasting for a few friends at our house. We got a spread of cheese from St. James Cheese Company - a Mrs. Applebys Cheshire, a Lincolnshire Poacher, and a Lagiole from France. Also a wild boar salami and a goose, duck, and chicken pate. Now, the beer! We started with a mellow Mana Wheat Ale from Maui Brewing Company - a Hefeweizen brewed with Maui Gold Pineapple. I actually didn't know about the pineapple until I just looked at the can right now. I think the fruity characteristics that are often present in Hefeweizens really lent itself to the inclusion of pineapple to a very smooth and delicious result. Next up was a Goose Island special series beer called Fleur . It's a Belgian Style ale with steeped hibiscus flowers. Excellent. Goose Island produces some seriously high quality beers, and I was grateful to have the opportunity to try this one. Became more complex and flavorful as it warmed. Hibiscus seems to be somewhat of a trend these d...