beer NOLA

It was great to go to the WYES Beer Tasting at its ol’ home at UNO Lakefront Arena. Sure the 2006 Tasting at the then deserted Riverwalk was pretty nice (sunny and spacious!), but last year’s Tasting at Generations Hall was horrible .. I swear in that overcrowded mess of a venue there were actual sections of pitch darkness in which they wedged in homebrewers to distribute their brews. But the Arena, while not exactly having great ambience, is spacious enough (just), and the circular layout means you’re never going the wrong way. My only wish (other than the aforementioned desire for more American craft/micro) is that WYES pushes this event out to 3 or even 4 hours. This year had huge turnout (over 3000 people!) and more brewers to boot. So please WYES, either make this event longer and make it a Tasting or keep it the current paltry two hours and turn it into a Binging. Anywho, on to the brews!

NOLA Brewing
I was looking forward to trying the brews from NOLA Brewing because it was the first public tasting of an entirely new and local brewery. The Brown and the Blonde were both very good, and I’m impressed I liked the Blonde at all since I usually don’t care for that style. Often times “Blonde” is just another name for a Golden or a limp ale that may as well be generic lager, so I’m glad their Blonde isn’t gutless. But like I said, that style’s not really my thing so I spent most of my time focusing on the Brown. It was different than I expected, it had a lighter, sharper, more effervescent mouthfeel to it than say a Brooklyn Brown Ale. I was also happy that unlike many Brown Ales out there, they didn’t decide to throw in nut flavorings or make it anything other than a Brown. So yeah, a nice, solid, surprisingly refreshing American Brown… well done guys! Of course I’ll have to reserve final judgement until this stuff is kegged and bottled.

I also learned a bit about some future beers they’re working on. A Watermelon beer is possibly in the works, which would be great and wouldn’t come into conflict with Abita’s berry beer offerings .. though I’d love to see someone local make a Blueberry beer. The Watermelon was actually at the fest being distributed by Crescent City Homebrewers; NOLA’s Brewmaster, Peter Caddoo, brewed it in that organization. But what really has me excited, and flat out impressed for such a new venture is a possible ISPA. When co-founder Kirk Coco first uttered that term, I was already several beers in and initially thought he said I2PA or IIPA, common terms for Imperial IPA. But no, he meant ISPA, an India Sweet Potato Ale. It’ll be an IPA, but instead of using malt for the sugar source, the yeast will much on sweet potato! This is a really cool idea on two levels: 1) If they pull this off and it’s good, it’ll firmly establish their craft-brewing street cred. 2) There are dozens of breweries that use pumpkin and even a couple that use sweet potato for flavoring, but to use it in place of malt is just inspired. Going crazy with the IPA style is a hallmark of American craft breweries, and for NOLA’s entry into that style to be something like ISPA is very very cool.

So congrats Kirk and Peter, this was a great first outing for this city’s newest and only brewery, can’t wait till this stuff is in bars and on store shelves.

Redstick Brewmastaers
My flat-out favorite homebrewers of the night were these guys. In order of preference, the 568 Saison was my favorite beer of the night, shortly followed by April’s Grand Cru, Saison II, Triple D Robust Porter and Corriander Ale. These are such wonderful brews that I wish they’d team up with someone and bring these to market.

Mystic Krewe of Brew
The very first beer I tried at the Tasting was Mystic’s Coconut Porter, which was already a hot item just minutes into night. This was a fantastic beer, not something I’d want all the time, but an excellent showcase of what can be done with the Porter style beyond coffee, chocolate and hazelnut flavors and adjuncts. My buddy Steve remarked that it was like drinking a Pina Colada and a Guiness all at once, and while I don’t completely agree with that, that’s certainly the direction the brew was going in. The Sweet Unemployment Stout and Chocolate City Stout were, just like last year, very solid stout offerings that I wish were bottled; especially the former… sweet stouts are hard to come by. I was also pleasantly surprised by the Tax Rebate Pale Ale which I think may have been my favorite pale ale of the night.

Home Brewers Underground
These guys, along with Escambia Bay and McGuires were all related, but I only made it to the HBU table. Their Possum Killer Porter was pretty good, but the Barleywine they had was so damn good. I talked to one of the members there about cameras for a while (I guess that’s what happens when you have several pounds of camera strapped around your neck) and he returned the favor by hooking me up with a full cup of the 9.5% Barleywine … twice. It was sad to see not many people at this table, because they had some great brews, and the Barleywine definitely made it into my top tier of the night. HBU also had a great motto: “Comitted to the responsible art of Zymurgy. We encourage you to ‘Go Brew Yourself’”

Heiner Brau
Wow, when I suggested that HB bring the beers they make for Luke this year, I didn’t think that was already in their plan. Sadly, they ran out of this pretty quickly, but they did have their Maerzen on tap which was wonderful. I wish this was more readily available in the fall for Oktoberfest!

Lazy Magnolia
I’m really glad they decided to just focus on the Southern Pecan and to bring large quantities of it. When I was making my final pass of the evening, they were still pouring. I was glad to hear that they’re working on getting the beer into the New Orleans market, whenever that may be.

Crescent City Homebrewers
Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to their area until the end of the evening and all I really had time for was the Watermelon Wheat. Good thing for me, this was a fantastic beer!

Regrets
Sadly, I didn’t have time to make it to Hurricane Brewing, Escambia Bay, McGuires, Montgomery Brewing, LA Lagers, or Perdido Vineyards. I saw, too late, that Perdido brought a Satsuma Cider and a Satsuma Wheat, doh!

All in all this was a great WYES Beer Tasting, with a larger turnout both in terms of vendors and drinkers, and was defined by the craft and sprit of homebrewers and microbrewers.