Nora McGunnigle

On Sunday I had a great opportunity to enjoy the beautiful afternoon (well, beautiful if you weren't watching the Saints game) out on the upper balcony at the Avenue Pub.

Baton Rogue Metro Council has approved an ordinance amendment to permit breweries to sell up to 10% of their product in a tap room environment. This means that Tin Roof can move forward with their planned tap room construction, which is great news for them.

There's a beer-focused fundraiser (OK, also wine and food) happening in Mandeville on August 23, 7-10pm at Benedict's Plantation (1144 North Causeway Blvd.) The big news (from my perspective) is that Chafunkta Brewing has announced that they will be debuting a brand new beer at the fundraiser. It's still a mystery right now, but Josh Erickson, head brewer, gave this as a hint:  "We wanted to bring our passion for quality, craft beer to a larger audience. We selected a style that, to our knowledge, is not currently being commercially brewed in Louisiana. It's one that we think will appeal to a broader market, but the style is one that still takes quite a bit of care to brew correctly."

I was talking to Keith Pumila and Leo Basile of Abita at the beer share held at NOLA Brewing on Saturday (THAT is an entirely different blog post which will be published sometime this week) and got the scoop on a couple of new beers.

I haven't mentioned much about this, since everything's just beginning. But I've been working alongside other beer nerds to create a nonprofit that will promote New Orleans and Louisiana craft beer and craft beer culture. It's called the Louisiana Craft Beer Collective. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter , and a website with more on our mission will be coming soon. While exploring this idea, I got together with Conrad Rolling, the Executive Director of the Louisiana Craft Brewers Guild . The Guild is the professional organization representing the brewers in the state and their interests. (Keep an eye out for them opening their membership up to "enthusiasts" which is non-professional member category.) When talking to Conrad about potential partnership opportunities, he told me about his connection with the local fundraiser " Bugs and Brew For Drew " which is held annually to benefit the Drew Rodrigue Foundation, which has the mission to ...

So, in my non-beer drinking life I work for a non-profit organization here in New Orleans, and often cross paths with other community organizations who are working to raise money to support their work. Jen Gick from Longue Vue House and Gardens and I crossed paths yesterday and I found out about this event which was truly RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS: Tom and I will be going- what's not to love? Beer, food, beautiful grounds, and a good cause on a lazy Sunday. And $12? A steal! Hope to see ya there. Email or call Jen Gick (504-293-4723, jgick@longuevue.com) by Friday to get your RSVPs in, very important!

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...

Got this email from the Avenue Pub (recall, I saw a letter in Offbeat a while back alluding to this).  Hooray!  Mark your calendar...for... Narke, Nils Oscar, Nynäshamns Ångbryggeri & Oppigarde Beer event. The Kindness of Strangers Swedish beer event January 21st, 2012 In April of last year I met the owner of a very famous beer bar in Sweden. Stene loves New Orleans and wanted to throw a Mardi Gras party at his bar in Stockholm. Working with Shelton Bros we figured out a way to ship kegs of Abita and NOLA to Sweden. The idea was that they would be filled with Swedish beer and then returned to the Pub. Those kegs are on their way back to us now and we have scheduled the event for Saturday Jan 21st. what I didnt expect was the beers Stene would choose to send us. More than a few have never been in the US before and there is little chance they will return. The Stormskaporter is surely one of the most coveted imperial stouts in the world. It's made in tiny batches and ...

A couple of local news crews were in the mix last night, here's a look at their story- I'm interviewed, exciting!

OK, so no updates lately because of the planning of the Beers Not Bullets fundraiser which oh by the way sold out and was totally awesome. So many excellent beers but now I must go to sleep for a day or 2, ok zzzzzzzz. Is it wrong to mention I've been too busy drinking beers and thinking about drinking beers to write about drinking beers? I dunno, but I will leave you with this pre-event article which is actually pretty effing awesome. Though not as awesome as the event, 'cause, how could it be AMIRITE??!?!?!?!?

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...

Many have asked what they can do to help. Here's the main thing: Buy a ticket and attend the fundraiser! Bring all your friends! Here's the link to the ticket website: http://beersnotbullets.eventbrite.com/ The other thing we really, really need is your help in acquiring rare and hard to find beers for the Beer Advocate/beergeek pouring table. This is how The BeerBuddha first imagined the event and we feel it's an important aspect, even though now we have all of Louisiana's breweries and distributors on board, as well as Lazy Mag in Mississippi, homebrewers, and several bars including the Avenue Pub, the Bulldog, and the Barley Oak. So please either comment here or email me at nora(dot)deirdre(at)gmail(dot)com with what you plan to bring and donate to the cause! Once I get that information from you, as a thank you, I will email you a discount code that will knock $10 off the price of admission. (of course, if you'd rather that money be used for Nathaniel's rec...

(this is cross-posted with my other blog, Nora in Nola . Apologies for the redundancy, but I didn't think I needed to re-invent the wheel for a new post!) Longtime readers of this blog may know my deep and abiding love for the Riverbend area restaurant Boucherie , one of my favorite places in the city. A couple weeks ago, the chef-owner, Nathanial Zimet, was shot and seriously wounded in an attempted armed robbery. He has no health insurance, and the hospitality industry has galvanized into action, contributing proceeds from dinner sales, wine sales, tips, and the major and amazing fundraiser on July 10 at the Howlin' Wolf called Beasts & Brass . However, the beer community wanted to be involved too. It all started with a blog entry by Jeremy "The Beer Buddha" Labadie: If you've ever been to Boucherie you know that the food is fantastic as is the beer selection. The Brooklyn beer dinner that was held in New Orleans was held at Boucherie and was amazing. N...

1) Tom and I were successful in checking a bag full of wonderful beers from CT. We had some time to kill between checking out of the hotel and when our flight left, so we went to Marshalls and got a small hard sided suitcase and three towels on sale, and then went to the Michael's craft store next door for bubble wrap, packing tape, and scissors. We bought 8 bombers of beer that we can't get in Louisiana: * Dogfish Head Chateau Jiahu: BA Review * Dogfish Head Red & White: BA Review * Victory: V-Twelve: BA Review * Avery Collaboration Not Litigation, batch 3 from 2009: BA Review * Cisco Brewery's "Wood" Series Cherry Woods (MA): BA Review * Berkshire Brewing Co Raspberry Barleywine/Strong Ale (MA): BA Review * Long Trail Double IPA (VT): BA Review * Allagash Tripel Reserve (ME): BA Review Tried to get good beer geeky things because they are all for the upcoming beer benefit at NOLA Brewing for Nathaniel Zimet, the chef-owner of Boucherie that got shot last ...

Have enjoyed a couple nice beers that we don't get in Louisiana. Long Trail Unfiltered IPA- very nice and low key IPA from Vermont. Also had the Long Trail Ale on draft, an alt style ale that is malty, delicious, and highly drinkable. BBC Steel Rail Pale Ale from Berkshire Brewing Company. The weather today was unexpectedly hot and sunny, and this was perfect to have coming in out of it after the funeral. Followed by Widmer's Double IPA. Also tried: Naughty Nurse Amber/Pale Ale from a City Steam, local Hartford brewery. Pleasant drinking, nothing too special, but fine and dandy for pre-wake drinking. Found a bomber of Blue Point Rastafa Rye Ale at the package store- given my weakness for rye beers and Blue Point Brewing, it was a gimme. Was at room temp at the store, and we have no fridge in our room. So between last night and tonight, we iced it down several times in the ice bucket till it was chilled. Ooh, tasty. Seriously beautifully hopped combined with the spicines...