Nora McGunnigle

That's right, it's Nuit Belge Week ! The big event itself is on Friday night, but there are great food and beer events featuring participating restaurants and out of town breweries happening all week. Here are the ones I know about: (And please do let me know if I've missed any)

I'm working on a new website that will be less beer-focused and more inclusive of my other work. Beer will be part of that, of course - but it's time to grow up, I guess. I'll post once that change is happening. Beer! Food! Cocktails! Culture! Travel! All the things! Here are a few snippets that I've had published as of late... Crisis Management: Breweries Persevere Through a Year of Natural Disasters What do you say to someone who’s lost everything? That was literally the first question I asked Rob Kent, head brewer at Bear Republic Brewing Company , who had just lost his home and all of his possessions to the wildfires that raged through Northern California in October. Broad Appeal: New Orleans’ most artisanal intersection The Broadmoor neighborhood of New Orleans was fought for and hard won in the months after flooding from Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures. A “green dot” designation suggested that the neighborhood be razed and turned into

Mark your calendars for Friday, March 9, at Generations Hall. My absolute favorite beer event (and one of my favorite events in New Orleans) is Nuit Belge, an evening focusing on pairing Belgian beer and high end food. 2018 is the third year the party has come to town, and it is delicious, delightful, and just the teeniest bit debauched. (I myself stumbled -literally- out of the Saint at 4am after Nuit Belge.) I call it Beer Nerd Prom, and the attendees have really leaned into that, getting super gussied up to drink fancy-ass beer, eat amazing food from some of the city's best restaurants, and suck down Murder Point oysters all night long. It is killer.

Short rib ravioli in a pho-like broth from The Stokehold paired with Port Orleans' Slackwater brown ale (See below for the details on this) Moving on from my umpteenth mid-life crisis, (which is still real but doesn't do much good to keep focusing on it) today is the winter solstice meaning that every day for the next 6 months will be longer and brighter. It's a comforting metaphor going into a new year. Tonight, there are two cool beer events happening:

An oldie but a goodie - one of my fave memes of all time I have a few assignments for various publications due the first week of January, and I'm slogging through the motions to get on top of them before Christmas week, when I'll be out of town.  Instead, all I can do is scroll through Twitter and despair. That's pretty much been my year. In the run up to the 2016 election, I was cautious and quiet about my liberal leanings, worried about my "brand" in a white male dominated industry in a conservative geographic area. Now, I'm not super loud and proud about it, but that's because I'm tired and afraid and feeling beat down about the political process and priorities of this government. 

So, in addition to beer, you may or may not know, I also write about food and booze here in New Orleans. I had a separate blog for this, once upon a time, which I haven't posted to for like 5 years. But these days, I'm trying to expand my brand so that it encompasses all the stuff I do - eating, drinking, travelling, writing. So this website will expand in focus as I plan to write about Things Other Than Beer. Like today's post about two Uptown brunch experiences I've enjoyed recently.