Nora McGunnigle

So, I ended up having a lovely, cheery, beery weekend.  Not only did I get the Mikkeller Single Hop series from my dear darling husband: But I also was the lucky recipient of a special NOLA Brewing Christmas beer intended only for internal/employee distribution!  Tom had ordered me a personalize NOLA Brewing work shirt but since it hadn't come in, Head of Brewing Operations and All Around Awesomest Person Melanie thought that it would be nice for me to have something for me to open, even though the shirt would be late.  WOW!  It was a hoppy ale, reminiscent of Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale: Delicious, and such a special way to toast the holiday. I hope everyone also had a wonderful holiday!  Can't wait for New Years Eve Beer drinking... The Avenue Pub's having a special event on the balcony... more on that soon.

Stayed in for Christmas Eve- Tom doesn't feel great and we certainly have enough beer on hand to keep ourselves happy. I made a particularly delicious spinach lasagna and we cracked open a couple of beers to celebrate the season. Samuel Smith's Winter Warmer (2011-12 vintage).  I have such a soft spot for the SS Warmer. I still recall a Thanksgiving several years ago when a friend also visiting family in CT stopped by our hotel room with a bottle of seriously vintage SS Winter Warmers.  Not because he collected them or anything, he just wandered into a gas station selling them for cheap 'cause they were old.  He loved the Winter Warmers and scooped up pretty much the rest of the stock. God, they aged great. But I digress!  The Samuel Smith Winter Warmer is on the list of the Anchor Christmas and Sierra Nevada Celebration that I look forward to every holiday season. For a winter beer, it pours out quite light- a dark gold, which is somewhat unusual.  But it's ...

Inspired by Polly Watts' list posted on the Avenue Pub's Facebook page: 1) Cantillon Iris. A gueuze that has been brewed with hops instead of wheat. Tart, sharp, a subtle hop bitterness on the finish. The sour and atypical bitterness marry well. Very refreshing while retaining the traditional gueuze sour characteristics. Recommended for sour lovers and sour skeptics alike. 2) Cantillon Zwanze 2010. More tart than sour, well balanced, crisp, refreshing, mild tartness and subtle. Like a belgian berlinerweiss. Wheat is turned all the way up. Smooth. Biscuits and lemon juice. Dances over the tongue leaving a trail of tartness behind. (I know it's something that won't be around to have again, but it was just that good.) 3) Mikkeller Drink In The Sun. Best session beer in the country. Wouldn't know it was less than 3%, the taste is much bigger than that. 4) Rogue Brutal Bitter: Balanced but very flavorful, like an amped up ESB. An interesting beer to say the least. It...

So Tom and I had the opportunity to go investigate a brand spanking new brewery that is currently gathering resources and money and investors, etc. So the brewery, 40 Arpent, which right now is a guy named Michael, hosted this free tasting at a bar called The Rusty Nail, which I think is a really great idea. Got me excited about the stuff he's brewing.  He had a lager that was really quite phenomenal and a "Red Beans & Rice" beer that he hopes can be his flagship beer, and with some refining, I think it can be.  (The beer is actually called Keltic Kajun, but due to my irrational annoyance with spelling things unnecessarily with a "K" I will likely always refer to it as Red Beans & Rice beer.) His dunkleweizen and stout are also beers to be reckoned with. Anyway, an unexpectedly fun and informative evening with unexpectedly delicious beer. Michael was very busy making the rounds but was a great sport in answering all my various questions and I just love...

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 ...

Since we are feeling the pinch from unexpected last minute international travel, our going out has been curtailed somewhat. But we did get out to the Avenue Pub for a friend's birthday and I tried two interesting beers while there. First was the Stillwater Autumnal- a malty, somewhat funky farmhouse ale.  There was a nice spiciness, and I thought I caught a bit of grape/wine taste up front, (looks like it was aged in Burgundy casks, which would explain that) and it had a nice dry finish.  Refreshing, tasty, and nicely challenging. Second was Brooklyn Brewery's The Companion, which was brewed to celebrate Garrett Oliver's work as editor-in-chief for the Oxford Companion to Beer.  According the the Brooklyn Brewery blog , Thomas created special new floor malts for The Companion, which is brewed in an old style called “wheat wine”, a wheat-based equivalent to barley wine. The floor malts give this beer a juicy malt character of considerable depth, 55% malted wheat give...

Got this email from the Avenue Pub (recall, I saw a letter in Offbeat a while back alluding to this).  Hooray!  Mark your calendar...for... Narke, Nils Oscar, Nynäshamns Ångbryggeri & Oppigarde Beer event. The Kindness of Strangers Swedish beer event January 21st, 2012 In April of last year I met the owner of a very famous beer bar in Sweden. Stene loves New Orleans and wanted to throw a Mardi Gras party at his bar in Stockholm. Working with Shelton Bros we figured out a way to ship kegs of Abita and NOLA to Sweden. The idea was that they would be filled with Swedish beer and then returned to the Pub. Those kegs are on their way back to us now and we have scheduled the event for Saturday Jan 21st. what I didnt expect was the beers Stene would choose to send us. More than a few have never been in the US before and there is little chance they will return. The Stormskaporter is surely one of the most coveted imperial stouts in the world. It's made in tiny batches and ...