Nora McGunnigle

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...

Putting the "blogger" in the educational content, the last day of the conference kicked off with 10 different blogger attendees sharing five-minute presentations on the work they do, be it with a specific audience, using a special tool, or working with public or private partner organizations. Louisiana's own Jay Ducote of Bite & Booze fame presented on his work with the state travel authority, LouisianaTravel.com, by providing the content for their LA Beer Trail page and filming a video of Louisiana's breweries. There were also presentations on generating revenue from blogging (hint: really not so much) and one I was super excited about, an introduction to a new beer app called Brewhorn . Brewhorn is an app that helps beer drinkers figure out what they would like to drink based on their preferences and location. I think it will really help people new to craft beer or curious in expanding their craft beer horizons in a way that is respectful to the consumer's...