Nora McGunnigle

New Orleans homebrewer Grant Capone has been dreaming about opening a brewery since 2011, when he received a Mr. Beer homebrew brewing kit from his wife, Megan. “I brewed two small batches and I was hooked.” After talking to several local brewers and homebrewers, Capone has developed a business plan for a three barrel system brewery and is actively searching for investors and a location. His hope is that the relative small size of the brewhouse will minimize startup costs while still leaving room for future growth. The name of the brewery is Laughing Troll. Capone says that the name of the brewery as well as his beers - are drawn from pop culture, gaming, and other online sources. Blue Waffle Lemon Party (which I would recommend you NOT google, because what is seen cannot be unseen) is a wheat beer with blueberries and lemon rind, and his award-winning Demaciale is a Belgian dubbel. “I want the beer to be more than something to drink. I want to create an experience and connectio...

Happy Thursday! It's a quiet week for my own work, but here's my second Oktoberfest column in the Gambit . Hope everyone is ramping up for Oktoberfest at Deutsches Haus or checking out the gorgeous Franconian lagers at the Avenue Pub. Prost! I did notice that Eater NOLA has been sharing many of my stories and calling me the "beer whisperer" which is pretty funny. There are a bunch of State of Louisiana enforcement shenanigans regarding serving homebrew beer at non-profit/charitable events going on right now. A lot of the activity seems to be in Facebook threads in the Brasseurs a la Maison homebrew club  out of Baton Rouge right now, but it seems that the state ATC commissioner is refusing to grant homebrew event permits due to issues of people indirectly paying for their beer as well as health and safety, by enforcing the provisions of the 2010 law that say that homebrew can only be served at homebrew club meetings to homebrew club members. It's a pretty n...

... 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.

I am so tired. I'm not hungover, and I've been getting a decent night's sleep every night - the precautions I've stuck to have definitely been working. It's like a cumulative exhaustion that gets more and more intense every morning I wake up. I love beer, I love drinking beer, I love talking to people about beer, I love seeing others enjoy beer. I love it more than pretty much anything else. I am still enjoying myself going to events. But I'm tired.

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...

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...

So, I finally was able to get a sample from my beer to see how things are going. Conclusion: Okaaaay, I guess. The gravity readings are a good 5 points (when factoring temperature in) over the high part of the range for the style. I wonder if maybe my dry yeast needed a bit more help. So, we'll see it still needs some more fermentation time and if the gravity comes down in the next week. If it's still under-attenuated, I'll probably pitch some live liquid yeast and hopefully I'll get it to where it needs to be. Some pictures of today's adventures: beer, dead yeast, other stuff. In a bucket. Sample... looks nice, but that doesn't mean it's ready. Ready to sample and test.

Today has been bananas. Planned to get up & at 'em early-ish (9am) to start prepping for brew day. Today is the first time I've ever homebrewed, exciting! Woke up to find out that there was no water in most of the city. So, that's a problem. Then after a little while, it came back, but we were under a boil advisory, so while that didn't cause too much of an issue, it did cause us to waste like a case of bottled water when we added it to the wort after it cooled. I discovered that brewing involves mostly two things; 1) sanitizing and 2) waiting. I decided to do an easy recipe so I could focus on the process - I love a nicely hopped pale ale, and I purchased a monthly kit from Brewstock - their March kit is called "Pontchartrain Pale Ale." Designed with spring in mind – this hoppy pale ale (not as hoppy as an IPA), will go with a walk along the lake, a picnic in the park or a concert in the square. Single hopped with Centennial, we balanced the bold f...

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...

OK, this event was like three weeks ago, and I had so much fun talking to local brewers and other awesome folks, and I didn't even post anything in a timely fashion! Since I was out of town this past weekend and missed the rescheduled New Orleans on Tap (as well as the Outlaw Homebrew Festival in Hattiesburg, MI, which John from the Keg and Barrel had invited me to judge) I figured I'd discuss the recent, more low-key local brewery and cheese/charcuterie event held on October 24 at the St. James Cheese Co. Peter Caddoo was there with a firkin of NOLA Brown ale, Gordon Biersch had something that was pretty unremarkable but fine. Gnarly Barley was there, and I hadn't met them yet. They had a very interesting rye beer, that was being called an IPA but didn't quite fit into that category, in my opinion. I think if they can call it something so that the IPA expectation isn't there, they'll have something. They also had a pretty decent coffee porter on tap. ...

Aaron Hyde, owner of New Orleans' only homebrew store, Brewstock, has a dream. A dream that Tom and I definitely share. A dream of creating a brewing cooperative that the entire beer community of New Orleans can participate in and benefit from.  I urge you to take a look at what Aaron is envisioning and perhaps make a donation at his Indigogo fundraising page . I hope that he can raise $55,000 in 12 days, but he needs YOUR help to make it happen! When Tom and I moved to New Orleans, one of the reasons was that the beer culture here seemed to be poised on the edge of greatness. It has one fantastic beer bar, one amazing brewery, many passionate supporters, restaurants that are improving their beer lists, all that. We wanted to be a part of that. We are still trying to find our way. If money were no object, I'd love to open another beer bar, maybe on the other side of Canal. If we were 20 years younger, then trying to open a brewery or find work at one would be our goal. I...