Taking It Easy in the Big Easy
Another useless holiday gift guide and Brieux Carré in Vieux Carré
There’s not much of the year left, and I’m caught up in the throes of madness on all fronts: the rush of getting 2022 wrapped up at the day job, the hurried pace of getting gifts wrapped up ahead of the holidays, and the pressure of wrapping up the year in one succinct newsletter (that’ll come next week). So this newsletter is a bit abbreviated this week, but I had to at least write about a brewery I visited on my birthday trip to New Orleans last weekend. You’ll see that below.
A reminder that with next week coming up, I could still use your nominations for NYC Beer of the Year. Let me know of a beer released by a New York City brewery in 2022 that you really enjoyed. For inspiration, last year’s Beer of the Year was Little Patience from Wild East Brewing, which seemed to be an instant favorite among a subset of beer nerds when it was released in 2021. Leave a comment and tell me your favorite from 2022.
Anyway, on with the show.
The 2022 Brew York Holiday Gift Guide
As a beer writer, I get press releases all the time about products to consider for “holiday gift guides.” I haven’t written a real, sincere holiday gift guide in about a decade, because everyone knows that the best gift for a beer nerd is quite obviously beer (I did have some other suggestions in my 2021 Gift Guide). And while dunking on bad gift suggestions from PR flacks seems to be a favorite December pastime of beer writers everywhere, here’s a quick roundup of some of the gifts that came to my inbox this year that claim to be perfect for the beer lover in your life:
Soap made from goat’s milk and Flower Power IPA: yes, you too can smell like the farmers’ market hippies in Ithaca, New York!
Mad Libs for Beer Drinkers: because as werido beer drinkers, we apparently can’t appreciate normie humor.
[One of a half-dozen pitches about products that keep your 12-ounce bottle of beer cold when it’s not in the fridge]: why are you letting that beer sit out? It’s twelve fucking ounces of beer. Just drink it before it gets warm.
A GrowlerWerks U-Keg: yes, for a mere $200, you too can be left with the burden of line-cleaning and CO2 supply issues. It’s like owning a bar, one half-gallon at a time!
A new beer koozie with [pointless innovation here]: my god, we don’t need to reinvent the beer koozie.
A homebrew kit: for every professional brewer that got their start on a homebrew kit they received as a gift, there are two hundred thousand people who never used it more than once.
A cheaper alternative to the Yeti cooler: “we modeled our cooler after a trendy, expensive brand, and while it’s inferior in every way, we think your readers will appreciate it!”
A Yeti cooler (or other Yeti-branded product): come on now, I don’t think my readers are that gullible.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,887
Total breweries visited in 2022: 358
Total breweries visited in Louisiana: 15
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #2885, Brieux Carré Brewing Company, New Orleans, Louisiana (Visited 19-Dec-2022)
It had been nearly eight years since my last visit to New Orleans, and while the city’s beer scene is still bubbling under the surface, it’s far more mature a beer city these days. Nowhere is that more true than a place like Brieux Carre (a fun name play on the French Quarter’s French name, Vieux Carre), where the lagers are all the rage, at least among staff and the brewer visiting out of town who sat next to me on a rainy Monday afternoon.
I had remembered hearing about Brieux Carre at the GABF Awards Ceremony earlier this year, when they won silver for their Crispy Boiz II Men in the Other Hoppy Lager category. I turned to a friend of mine and said, “that’s a great name. I want that beer.” Lucky for me, they tapped a keg of this snappy, super-clean New Zealand-hopped lager while I was sitting at the bar. Luckier for me, that award-winning brew wasn’t even the best lager of theirs that I had — that honor went to Brieuxvar 10°, a Czech-style Pale Lager that spicy and bready, gently hopped with Saaz.
Best of all, though, was the vibe felt perfectly craft beer-meets-New Orleans. The brewery is in a rowhouse just off Frenchman Street with a courtyard out back surrounded by houses. The staff was incredibly friendly and relaxed, and while the tourist traffic coming through was apparent, the taproom’s regulars’ presence was felt as they asked for pours in their mug club mugs. The attitude is decidedly laissez faire — just the way I’d expect in the Big Easy.
Long Read of the Week
Last week in the newsletter, I observed that there was a decidedly regional trend around Christmas beers after a trip to Ohio. But in Vinepair, Josh Bernstein shows the different ways that breweries take on holiday beers. Also featured in the piece: one of the newest releases from Brooklyn’s Back Home Beer that happens to be in my fridge right now.
One Last Thing
Have a safe and happy holidays! And stay warm — this weekend looks brutal. I’ll be back with my annual Beer Superlatives next week, in between trying to get to a nice round number of 365 breweries on the year.
Cheers,
Chris
Went to Brieux Carre on my visit back in 2018 (we were in NOLA for Wrestlemania, possibly the perfect city for it) and recall them being more Belgian-influenced back then? Several things in the 7%+ range certainly...
I'm in NOLA for a couple days every few weeks these days... Courtyard Brewing is doing extremely good work these days