Nora McGunnigle

This weekend was the Gambit-sponsored FestivALES, their second beer pub crawl. The one in May down in the Warehouse District had too many "crafty" beers for my tastes , but this one on Freret Street had much more consistently good beers. I don't think I tried much I haven't had before, but every single Louisiana brewery currently producing (Abita, Bayou Teche, Chafunkta, Covington, NOLA Brewing, Parish, and Tin Roof) were represented as well as neighboring breweries that have a significant presence here, Lazy Magnolia (MS) and Saint Arnold (TX.)

This week was a bit of a quiet one on the beer front - getting back in the swing of things at the Day Job took it out of me when it came to matters of craft beer. Hopefully all that will balance out soon. I've got a few exciting things in the works, and I'm very much looking forward to talking with brewers, restaurateurs, and other local beer enthusiasts and writing about them! Last week, me and a few other craft beer lovers met to discuss ideas and strategies around promoting craft beer in New Orleans and Louisiana. We were warmly welcomed by Ancora , which is a Neopolitan pizza/farm-to-table Italian restaurant on Freret Street, whose management loves craft beer and curates their 6 taps carefully to bring a diverse list of excellent craft beer to their customers. The management also kindly permitted us to bring bottles of beer that cannot be purchased in Louisiana to share, which is super cool of them. Note: one idea (and I'll discuss this in a future post about our Chri...