Nora McGunnigle

This Friday and Saturday are the WYES fundraising beer events: Friday's Private Beer Sampling and Saturday's International Beer Festival.

... Go crazy? Don't mind if I do! I kid! Although ACBW was a very busy week and I got pretty tired by the end of it, everything was so much fun. Great beers, great people, great general vibe. Yesterday's Grand Tasting at the Avenue Pub was the showcase event of the week, and I think Polly and her amazing staff pulled off a high quality and smooth running event.

May 5 is the eleventh anniversary of when Tom and I started dating. To celebrate that, Cinco de Mayo, and National Homebrew Day/Weekend, we collaborated on a beer together. Since I had Tom's partnership in this endeavor, we decided it would be fun to try an all-grain recipe. I was intrigued by a cool looking malt bill in an English Mild recipe I saw in Zymurgy, and started brainstorming around that. We ended up brewing the Mild recipe out of John Palmer's "Brewing Classic Styles" book, and I have a cunning plan to dryhop the Mild (which obviously makes it not a traditional style) with Simcoe hops. So it's like a British-American combination, much like Tom and myself. Doing a mash and a batch sparge and vorlauf and all that stuff was pretty labor intensive, I kind of almost forgot everything I learned on my first brewday. However! It did all come back to me, more or less, with some gentle reminding. We went to Brewstock to acquire some Maris Otter, Crystal 60, Cr...

The homebrewing and the FQF actually have nothing to do with each other, besides the fact that they were to two beer related activities I had this weekend. Homebrewing: after my tales of brewing and bottling , this was the easiest (but most nerve-wracking) step of all: tasting. From Friday night Bottle opened today (it's less carbonated than the other two were for whatever reason.) The color and the clarity (as you can see) came out beautifully. As far as aroma and taste goes, the hops presence I was hoping for really didn't make it into the final product, so it wasn't really what I was expecting. However, I still really like it! The absence of the hop flavor gives prominence to the yeast. Still plenty of bitterness. So it's kind of more like a Belgian pale ale? I need more palates to tell me if the spiciness in the flavor is just yeast and hops intermingling, or if it fermented too warm and those are esters or off-flavors all up in there. But it's p...

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 ...

After my previous gravity check , I waited 12 days to check again. I really only meant to wait a week, but things have been crazy busy. When I checked it yesterday, it measured in at 1.012 exactly, hooray! So that was super exciting. The taste was much less sweet as well. That meant that bottling would have to be done this weekend. Let me first say: My Kingdom for a Kegerator! Sadly, that is not really an option at this point, so bottling it shall be. First step: check to see if all supplies are in the house (priming sugar, bottles, bottle tops both regular or flip, sanitizer, siphon thing, bottling wand, tubing. Second step: go to Brewstock to get the random flip top cages and assembly as well as a couple new liter swingtops. (subset of the second step, burble to Aaron about your beer and your future homebrewing plans and get the scoop on the First Annual Louisiana Homebrew Competition). Third step: Sanitize the living crap out of everything, starting with the bottle tree, the...

I'd heard rumors of a new brewery coming around in New Orleans called the Courtyard Brewery. I'd seen some tweets from the brewer but wasn't sure what it was all about, except that it was going to be in New Orleans. I saw mention that Courtyard was finalizing a location a few weeks ago, and I sent a direct message asking about it. Not only did the question get answered (more info on that below) but I was warmly invited to come by and try their beers. Scott Wood and his wife Lindsay live in Lakeview where they brew beer and are raising their son. Lindsey is from Louisiana and Scott is from San Diego, and when they got together they moved to New Orleans. When they first moved back they lived in an apartment complex in the French Quarter, which had a communal courtyard, which is where they started brewing more than three years ago. Thus, the name. They moved to Lakeview and have much more space and have a six-tap draft system for their test batches, which I was lucky enough ...

Attn: all homebrewers! There are TWO upcoming homebrew competitions in Louisiana which sound quite exciting. 1) Aaron Hyde at Brewstock has announced the organization of Louisiana's first statewide homebrew competition in November 2013. It looks like it will coincide with all matter of beer celebration as well! The specific rules will be posted this month, but according to the press release : All 23 BJCP beer categories will be allowed for entry, with ribbons going to the top three beers in each category.  Prizes from sponsors will also be awarded.  The competition will be open to residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Arkansas only.  Judging will take place over the course of a weekend in November, to be determined. 2) Covington Brewhouse and Main Grain Homebrew Supplies are co-sponsoring an excellent homebrew competition that may result in your beer being produced for distribution! In the tradition of Iron Chef, Bombastic Brewer will p...

Literally, in Mississippi, it is illegal to: 1) homebrew and 2) sell or serve beer with a ABW of over 5%.  So for the second year, the homebrew competition held at the Keg & Barrel in Hattiesburg is technically illegal and all organizers, brewers, judges, and attendees are outlaws IN THE EYES OF THE MISSISSIPPI LAW! Spoiler alert: we did not get arrested.  Much to the dismay of the Beer Buddha .  Maybe next year, Jeremy! We did, however, have an awesome time. David Graves and his Brew Cart! (check him out at thebrewcart.com) Brewers' Village! Tom and I drove up on Saturday morning and got to the  Keg & Barrel  at around 10am, per John Neal's request.  We kicked back with Jeremy and met some of the folks from  Lazy Magnolia  Brewery and  Raise Your Pints , a grassroots non-profit lobbying group to overturn the drastic and archaic beer laws in the state. After some wandering around and meeting folks, the awesome judging...

Judges waiting, kickass judge RV,  the beer cart, and the brewers' field. Liveblogging! Breaking MS law! Stay tuned!