Nora McGunnigle

So, first of all, you all know that American Craft Beer Week (hereforafter known as ACBW) is this week, correct? Tonight Tom and I are going to the Avenue Pub for their Pretty Things historical beer event, which I've been crazy excited for since I first heard about it a couple months ago. There's lots of other stuff too, check it out! We have many friends coming into town towards the end of the week and over the weekend, so I don't know how many events we'll end up getting to, but we shall see. ALSO, many, many congratulations to NOLA Brewing for bringing home the Gold in the Brown/Amber Ale category of the AmeriCAN Canned Craft Beer Festival held this past week! Good work, guys, and I certainly wasn't surprised, considering how addicted Tom is to his Brown Ale cans.

We had the most fun Easter Saturday/Session Beer Day. NOLA Brewing sponsors a fundraiser for the Gulf Restoration Network every year that involves teams going on a scavenger hunt (costumes and unique team names are encouraged) throughout a particular neighborhood until arriving at the final destination, where the NOLA beer flows freely. Tom and I joined up with a fellow beer geek and homebrewer, Dan, and a friend of his from out of town, Erin. Since we are pretty deficient in the costuming creativity department, we just wore our regular clothes and called ourselves the Damn Yankees. Tom and I bicycled over to the Howlin' Wolf, which was the starting point. We had a couple of beers. Sadly, I chose to drink a non-session beer, the NOLA Blonde, which came in at 4.9%. I KNOW.  Anyway, here's a picture of us at the start: Photo credit: Jeremy "Beer Buddha" Labadie There were tons of fun costumes: Devilled Keggs, The NOLA Mix Sixpack, bunny rabbits galore, Sexy Je...

Picked up the latest issue of Offbeat Magazine last night while hanging out on Frenchmen Street and found something of great interest to me in the Letters to the Editor section: STOCKHOLM FESTIVAL First of all, thanks for a great magazine. You have helped me so much in learning about the music and culture of New Orleans. On Friday we start the first ever New Orleans Festival in Sweden at my club in Stockholm [Akkurat Bar & Restaurant]. I have beers coming in from both Abita and NOLA Brewing Company. To my knowledge, it’s the first time these beers have been shipped on draught outside the United States. We will fill the empty barrels with Swedish beer and ship them back to Polly at the Avenue Pub on Saint Charles Avenue, who is doing a wonderful job for the beer culture. Hopefully we can have a continuous exchange program working in the future. We also got loads of food like po-boys and of course crawfish, which are in season in Sweden right now. Yes we eat them here too. —Stene I...

Feeling slightly less sassy (which happens after having spent the night before drinking beer and then much of the day doing likewise.) We spent the afternoon out in Mid-City for the BrewHaHa , as I drunkenly vowed I would do last night. It was a good time! Had a couple NOLA brews - Irish Channel Stout and Hopitoulous IPA - and the LA 31 Boucanee (a cherrywood smoked wheat beer) and a Rye Pale Ale from Abita, which was sadly weird - overly malty and sweet. Ah, well. The NOLA beers were awesome as usual, and I also enjoyed the Boucanee- it went very well with the very spicy sausage po'boy we got from the Crescent City Pie & Sausage stand there. They had several local vendors and artists there, as well as flea marketers and non-profit organizations who set up shop. I liked the fact that the organizers also structured it so that people could have samples of the beer, and not just pints. I kind of wish we'd gone with the sample option because some beers there were only avail...

BrewHaHa, bitches! You going? I will be there on the roof (yeah, that's weird, right? No matter how venerated the ABANDONED BUILDING BELOW is) of 300 N Broad at Bienville, on the ROOF of the old Schwegmann's. There's gonna be beer, and coffee, (to make it seem like it's not just about the booze, I think- nice try) and food (because of deliciousness.) It's today, from 11am-4pm. I personally cannot think of a better way to spend the day than drinking local beer on the roof of some crazy New Orleans-nostalgic building. Now that I've made that joke twice, I fully expect to be thrown off said roof. I can only hope that I drink enough to make the ride a pleasant one.