Nora McGunnigle

Son of a Peacherman collaboration between Fairhope Brewing and Druid City, both AL breweries First of all, congrats to Chris Paylor who won a pair of tickets to the NOLA Eats King Cake Tasting by suggesting a pairing of NOLA Brewing's Seventh Street Wheat with Haydel's king cake, on my Facebook page. Though I won't be able to make the tasting, I'm pretty excited to check this pairing out before Mardi Gras. Second, Stein't Deli's Annual Beer Day is happening on Saturday! It involves a brewing demonstration and a bottle share. Also on Saturday: Abita's 2nd annual Abita on the Avenue, the Avenue in question is St. Charles. Go here to check it out .

My Christmas gift to you is lots of interesting articles about beer! Bayou Teche's Karlos Knott sitting behind a pint glass full of cracklins, because why not.

Winter beers are still my bread & butter right now: check out my writeup on the Alcohol Professor . I'm pretty sure next week I'll have yet another one published online. For my weekly Gambit column, I discussed Parish Brewing's upcoming Grand Reserve Barleywine release .

A few weeks ago I got an email from Irish blogger/writer Seamus Murphy, who writes for Trenditionist  and had recently been to Belgium. He wanted to know if I'd publish his account of visiting St. Feullien . Since I'm not going to be going there myself in the foreseeable future, I figured I'd take the opportunity to share this with my blog audience.  (all photographs are courtesy of Seamus Murphy.) It's interesting (and a little sad to me) that Americans are still thought of as crappy beer drinkers, regardless of the fact that we have a huge number of craft breweries throughout the country.  Also, when he start talking about the start of their St. Feullien tour experience, it made me think a little bit about this April Fools post from earlier this year which is hilarious.   Thanks, Seamus!

This week's Brewsday Tuesday focuses on the upcoming Bayou Beer Festival, with a hat tip to the other beer festival happening on the 16th, the Gambit's FestivALES.

Did a photo shoot at Restaurant August for an upcoming article in Southern Brew News Hope everyone had a great Halloween! I know the weekend ahead is still the holiday weekend, sort of, so stay safe and drink well. I am sort of a fuddy-duddy when it comes to Halloween - living in Salem, MA for 5 years can do that to a person. But at least now I enjoy being Halloween-adjacent, if not quite celebratory.

Parish Brewing's Dr. Hoptagon at the Avenue Pub on 9/25 Super link-a-licious this week. Not only has Louisiana's Craft Brewer Week hit the national press, but a few of my own articles came out as well.

Several weeks ago I was contact by North Carolina blogger Bryan Roth , who has been working on what he calls " The Six Pack Project ." The idea is to select six beers that are in bottles or cans to properly represent the craft brewing culture of the state of Louisiana.

The NOLA taproom opened this week! I have been keeping busy working on a couple pieces for the Gambit and Where Y'At as well as hustling doing pitches for other publications, which is why I haven't been able to write a blog post about the awesome Bayou Teche beer dinner I had at Sainte Marie Brasserie last week (a week ago today, actually.) I'm really hoping to get that up with some pictures in the near future, because it was pretty kickass. The chef, Kristen Essig, was so warm and welcoming and so excited about the pairings! It was great. ANYWAY, for your links du jour:

One of Maine's many state slogans is "The Way Life Should Be," and my time in New England so far would bear this sentiment out. The reason I'm here is to attend the Beer Bloggers Conference, held in Boston but with a pre-event excursion in Portland ME and Portsmouth NH.

My previous post about the beer lineup at Bugs & Brew For Drew has gotten some notice: Here's my slightly different writeup for the Gambit blog, posted yesterday. Here's a link from La Trappe Monk's beer blog I love the cask ale love! I hope it leads to more and more of it! Also, re: NOLA's famous (or infamous) brewery tours, starting tomorrow (4/12) they are going to start charging $5 for a pint glass that is necessary to gain admittance. According to a Facebook post made this afternoon: "Starting tomorrow, we're changing the setup of our Friday tours due to the steady increase in size. We will now be charging $5 for a NOLA logo pint glass when you arrive. This will still include unlimited beer and an actual tour, but you will now get to take the glass home with you when you leave!" Personally, I think this policy is long, LONG overdue.Five dollars isn't too much, but it's enough to discourage habitual free loaders (myself include...

OK, so the New Orleans International Beer Festival is this Saturday, March 9, from 2-6pm. Here's a few updates from Louisiana breweries as to what they'll be providing (folks that I didn't include in my last post .) Covington: Will be bringing a cask for the cask garden! Abita is bringing all their standards, including Abbey Ale, Spring IPA, Oyster Stout, and Strawberry Harvest Lager. They are contributing 2 casks to the cask garden: a cask conditioned version of Vanilla Double Dog and ZSB – Zach's Special Bitter. Bayou Teche (got this from the New Orleans International Beer Festival website ): LA31 Biere Noire, LA31 Biere Pale, LA31 Boucanee, LA31 Passionee, ACADIE, and their new seasonal, Saison D'Escrevisses. For more info on what beers will be available at the Festival, visit the Breweries page on the Festival's website. You can still buy tickets here . I'm pretty sure that Gambit and the Beer Buddha are giving tickets away, too. (NOTE, dead...

Louisiana breweries have been getting some great press in the new year! Read about a Bostonian beer blogger's experience in New Orleans, especially at NOLA Brewing. Brenton Day AKA the Ale Runner updates us on what Andrew Godley and Parish Brewing are looking to accomplish in 2013. Jeremy "Beer Buddha" Labadie does his annual 2013 Mardi Gras roundup. NOLA.com explores the Old Rail's current bureaucratic limbo. Very cool to see more and more people talking about craft beer! A couple other items of note: NOLA Brewing is going to release Irish Channel Stout YEAR ROUND !  There will be an "Abita on the Avenue" pub crawl on Saturday that will feature several different kinds of very special cask ales. I want to try the Wooden Indian IPA, the Cask Conditioned Restoration Ale, and the ESB. ESB on cask! I hope it lives up to my expectations. It starts at the Avenue Pub at 3:30pm. I hope everyone turns out to support MORE CASK ALE in New Orleans! Ste...

Top 10 Louisiana Beers of 2012 This is according to Jay D. Ducote, Baton Rouge blogger and personal role model of mine. He asked me, Jeremy " Beer Buddha " Labadie, Polly Watts from Avenue Pub , Vanessa Gomes from Barley Oak , Eric Ducote , and Brenton Day  to submit our top 5 beers of the year brewed in Louisiana and created a Top 10 from our replies. I think I'm attributed in the blurb for every beer on the list that I had a part in nominating. Anyway, GO CHECK IT OUT ! It's awesome to see more an more advocating around craft beer in Louisiana. THAT'S THE DREAM! Check out the other blogger's blogs as well, and make them a part of your Louisiana beer blog reading. ALSO! Stay tuned this week for a write up of what Barley Oak in Mandeville is up to with their new brew pub, The Old Rail. I talked to Vanessa Gomes, the public face of the Barley Oak (formal title: Director of Marketing and Event Coordinator), Nick Powers, the owner of both establishments, ...

I may have expressed my excitement previously about my favorite neighborhood bistro, Coquette, having a special dinner with all you can eat fried chicken, greens, watermelon, mashed potatoes, creole tomatoes, cornbread, coleslaw, accompanied by delicious beers. It was pretty much the best night ever. Talked to really nice and cool folks, ate great food (in addition to the above, there were passed apps that included shrimp, deviled eggs, and this amaaaaaaazing boudin wrapped in collard greens and cut up to sort of approximate sushi rolls) and drank some very nice beer that was well suited to the hot summer evening. We were greeted with a Lil' Slammer, which was a cute way to start, and having just walked in from the heat, it went down nice and easy.  Then as we wandered, we found the beer table pouring Stoudt's Karnival Kolsch and Anchor's Brekles Brown. Everyone was super nice, and after talking with a fellow ChowHound (Sanglier) and his guests for a bit, we found...

Hey, I got quoted in the Times Picayune on my thoughts about beer in fine dining .  It all started whenTodd Price tweeted looking for suggestions of restaurants with good beer lists, and I think I sent him like 8 tweets worth of info. He contacted me and asked me a bunch of questions, and voila! Quoted as an expert. AWESOME.

BIG NEWS- a few local New Orleans beer bloggers are joining up to create a NOLA beer website at:  http://nolabeerguide.wordpress.com/ . You may be asking yourself, why does New Orleans need this blog, given that there are several venues to find out about beer here?  There's a Facebook page for all of Louisiana, the major players tend to post updates on Facebook and Twitter, there are several beer bloggers on the scene, including yours truly and the Beer Buddha (who was the one who actually started up the NOLA Beer Guide and asked me to participate.) However, the hope is that this website will consolidate ALL of these points of information, so that we can most effectively get the word out to all New Orleans beer lovers. Since there are several of us posting, we don't need to worry about if someone gets slammed at work and can't get the time to update, or if someone's out of town, or whatever. I will still be posting here- about my personal beer tastings and ...