Nora McGunnigle

Man, it has been a busy... (looks at date of last post)... few months. Bypassed the holidays and Mardi Gras, looks like. Oops. Right at the new year, Tom Conklin opened his Chappapeela Farm Brewery. Then Mardi Gras with its various seasonal beers and cans . And riding Nyx with my krewe! (I acquired several beers along the route from various beer geeks who were able to catch me, heh.) And then this past weekend was Nuit Belge, probably the best beer event I've ever attended. It had amazing Belgian (and Belgian-style) beers paired with dishes from great local restaurants . Check out the (well, my) photos of a great, great night . Now, on the horizon: Girls Pint out at Cooter Brown's on March 8, and then another event there on the 9th - Sour Power , with sour beers from New Belgium, NOLA Brewing, and Great Raft (including the first New Orleans release of Great Raft's dry hopped Brett IPA Oceans Between Us.) On March 10, master sour blenders Eric and L...

Stopped by NOLA Brewing today to do some planning for the Brooklyn Mash panel discussion, The State of Craft Beer , that I'm introducing (check out my bio photo here , it's hilarious yet awesome.) While there, I saw all four new bomber bottles for the NOLA Funk series for Lowerline, Sauvage, Arabella, and Piety. [ Update 3/12: My bad! The bottles at the brewery are the prototypes, and have not been filled yet. The first big batch of beer from the new sour facility, Lowerline, will be available in about 3-4 weeks. That will be followed by Sauvage, Piety, then Arabella. All should be out in bottles in the next few months. Sorry, there's still a little while to wait.]

I've been playing around with my camera and have a few cool shots that actually came out well, as well as a couple that are kinda blurry. Once I get access to (and knowledge of) some photo editing software, I'll fix up the blurrier ones. A bit of a blurry shot of all the brewers at the Irish House Emilyand Cari taking pictures of the brewers

Matt Horney (Old Rail), me, Zac Caramonta (Gnarly Barley), and Josh Erickson (Chafunkta) during ACBW at the Avenue Pub. Bad Blogspot! It crashed and wiped out my previous draft of this blog post. However, I now suspect that it may have sucked, so it may be for the best.

Cookies from 40 Arpent's ribbon cutting ceremony last week. May Day! And that means that American Craft Beer Week is almost upon us. It is also Jazz Fest. And Savor American Craft Beer and Food Experience is happening in Washington DC. And a new brewery, Gnarly Barley, is opening. April was also pretty crazy with the Brew Dogs hitting town, Festival International happening in Lafayette, and a bunch of new restaurants opening and other restaurants expanding. I have a new gig! I'm writing features for Eater New Orleans . Some of them are straight up food writing, but I've also started a new recurring feature called Beer Here! which covers restaurants' beer lists, etc. In a testament to the tail-eating snake that is online media today, Todd Price of NOLA.com/Times Picayune did an aggregate story on the work I'm doing on a primarily aggregate website. (Aggregate: pretty much where you round up cool stories and direct your audience to them - much like this blog...

Drinking a NOLA Brewing Rebirth Pale Ale while watching the Roots of Music band, which will be receiving a portion of the proceeds of the beer. I'm heading to Shreveport today to check out Great Raft and Red River Brewing, but before I go, a few things to share: Brewsday Tuesday article about Bayou Teche's collaboration beer with French brewery La Bambelle, Bayoust, which will be released at Lafayette's Festival International. Article on the founding of New Orleans' Girls Pint Out on the Alcohol Professor website. Great article in the NOLA Defender by Sam Nelson about the Cajun Fire folks.

Brooklyn MASH has left the city after their whirlwind tour spreading beer, food, music, art, comedy, and general good times.

(Note: behold a post/rant from my blogger in crime, Tom. I also posted a little something about this in the Gambit this week. This month's new Where Y'At also has my more in depth article on this subject. - Nora)  "It shall be unlawful for any person to carry or drink from any opened glass container in or on any public right-of-way, including any street, sidewalk, park or alley within one block of a Mardi Gras parade route, two hours before the published beginning time of the parade, during the parade, or within one block of the published disbanding area of the parade within two hours of the published or actual ending time of the parade, whichever occurs later."

 Happy Carnival, y'all! First, the contest. No, wait, first, the apology for letting too much time lapse between blog updates. I've had a lot of deadlines and doing any writing that I absolutely didn't NEED to do was not at the top of my list... OK, now the contest. I have a pair of tickets to the NOLA Eats New Orleans King Cake Tasting on February 1 at the Little Gem Saloon. And all you need to win them is to visit my Facebook page and leave a comment on the contest post with the perfect beer to pair with king cake. The beer should be available to purchase in New Orleans, and you can be as specific or general with what kind of king cake you're looking to pair your beer choice with. I'm the sole judge, but I can definitely be swayed by "likes" on your contest entry. Share as many ideas as you'd like! Contest winner will be announced Monday, January 20. Onto the all important links!

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.

How was your Thanksgiving? Uh-huh, uh-huh, that's cool, I don't really care. So much is happening in the wide world of beer! My cover story for the current edition of Southern Brew News FIRST of all, NOLA Brewing is gearing up to release their newest New Belgium collaboration called Black Strap Chicory Stout. It's a milk stout made with black strap molasses and chicory. Brewmaster Peter Cadoo and brewer Mike "Indy" Grap went out to Fort Collins at the end of October/start of November to brew the beer. Stay tuned for info on its release.

My time in Denver for GABF was incredible and overwhelming and SO MUCH. I went to some great places while there: Euclid Kitchen (where we had lunch our first day and went to a great Deschutes "carnival"), Great Divide , Falling Rock , Freshcraft , Hogshead , Hops & Pie , and Lucky Pie Pizza & Tap Room . There were special promotions from breweries, especially Colorado breweries. I got a lot of info from friends and colleagues, and also this website . I'll hopefully be publishing my adventures in more detail shortly, so I'll be sure to link that next week. Garrett Oliver pouring beer at GABF for Brooklyn Brewery

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.

Andy pouring a pint at the Pub And Louisiana Craft Brewer Week continues with the release party of the NOLA Brewing/New Belgium collaboration beer, Swamp Grape Escape. It's a Belgian single style brewed with Louisiana local muscadine grapes, making it a perfect beer to kick the week off with.

Apologies for not getting these out yesterday, but I've been under the weather. This week was a two-fer for me in the Gambit: my feature article on Louisiana Craft Brewer Week and my regular Brewsday Tuesday column on the Avenue Pub's badass events in the recent past and near future. I also suggest you investigate my other blog to read about local eatery Salu's Oktoberfest kick off pig roast that's happening tomorrow, Saturday 9/21 for both lunch and dinner. Also, check this blog out for my writeup on the new NOLA Brewing taproom as well as suggestions as to how to help get the word out about it on national beer sites. Speaking of NOLA Brewing, Thrillist named it the best craft brewery in Louisiana in their story choosing the best craft brewery for every state. And also speaking of Louisiana Craft Brewer Week above, Todd Price did a great writeup in NOLA.com in which he spoke with local brewers like NOLA Brewing and Gnarly Barley. Love it! I am so ...

NOLA Brewing's tap room is now open for business 6 days a week for beer selling and general merriment. It opens at 2pm on the weekdays (except Tuesday, when it's closed) and 11am on the weekends, and closes at around 10pm at night. ( You can read more about it here .) As this is the second tap room opening in the state, and the first on in New Orleans for quite some time now, I'm hoping we can get the word out about it so that it becomes a must-visit stop for anyone in town looking for some fresh, quality beer. In order to do so, we need it to start showing up prominently on beer review sites like RateBeer and Beer Advocate. So, if you are an active member on either of these sites, go here to RateBeer and here to Beer Advocate and add your two cents. After you've checked out the new tap room, of course. I've been there three times now- once for the soft open during the last Saints pre-season game, once on their official grand opening, and once for my bir...

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:

My new print column! First of all, per last week's breathless announcement , here is the link to my Inside Northside article.  http://www.insidenorthside.com/craft-beer-revolution/ . Also, my Brewsday Tuesday post , which will be published in the upcoming print version.

And you know what that means... new column up on The Gambit's blog . It's a very condensed version of my impressions of the Beer Bloggers Conference, focusing on my Louisiana compatriots and the two breweries that we have access here in Louisiana, Samuel Adams and Harpoon. I'm currently working on a Sweetwater beer review piece for the next Brewsday Tuesday, so keep an eye out for that next week. I hope everyone had a great IPA Day last week! I ended up enjoying several delicious beers at the Avenue Pub, the highlight being rum barrel-aged Hopitoulas from NOLA Brewing. Then I came home and had a Heady Topper, just because.

While I have been in my own little world at New Orleans' Tales of the Cocktail, several very interesting tidbits of beer news has come down the pike.