Brooklyn Local 2 and Mississippi Boll Weevils

I’ve been on a hot streak. Through the magic of Twitter and Facebook (I think Mad Madam Mim has something to do with it), I have been racking up on more free stuff than the bearded guy on the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Jackson. From free drinks and Starlight Racing passes to tickets to see Dirty Dozen, the power of social networks has gotten to the point of ridiculousness. Within a few hours of on Rebecca Black's favorite day, I pulled down tickets for the North Mississippi Allstars show at Tipitina's and 2 VIP tickets to the Top of The Hops Beer Festival in addition to the 2 I had won in a previous Twitter competition.

We started what I had dubbed “the greatest free day ever” early Saturday morning at the greatest beer bar in New Orleans and quite possibly the South. Avenue Pub teamed up with Draft Magazine and Unibroue to organize a bus that would take folks from the south shore over to Mandeville for Top of the Hops. We arrived around 10:30 (and no, not PM) to find that my streak was still going strong. Along with the free tickets and bus passes, the prize pack included a round of Unibroue Blanche de Chambly mimosas.

With the bus pulling up on St. Charles to take us to the holy land of the Northshore, I took advantage of New Orleans’ greatest law and got a few Abita Black IPAs to go. I figured the road beer would ease our Christmas-morning-like anticipation, and would make the trip across the lake somewhat bearable. The only thing the beer did was help me give the on board bathroom an official and proper breaking in. Our anxiousness had almost reached its boiling point as the road running through Fountainbleau State Park opened up near the lake front. Our chariot pulled over and dumped us out near the entrance to this beer drinkers’ paradise.

In its second year, Top of the Hops was very accessible to all types of beer drinkers. For $35, the guy who only knows beer as Miller Lite, Blue Moon, and “dark” beer could sample just as many 2 ounce glasses of Duvel as the pompous beer geek guy, the resident hop head, and the Local Skanks (the band, not the girls over at Larry Flynt's).


From the mainstream Shocktops and Amberbocks, to the local NOLAs, Lazy Magnolias, Abitas, and LA 31s, to the not-so-micro Stones, Rogues, and Brooklyns, all the usual suspects were here. In addition to all the well known American crafts, the number of Belgian breweries represented at this outdoor festival was fairly impressive. Sampling all of these new and sometimes strange beers caused hunger to start to set in.

We rolled into the VIP area like Boosie to find that Zea was tasked with providing grub. And did they ever provide. Making our way down the buffet line, we piled our plates high with shrimp pasta, roasted garlic hummus, roasted corn grits, and Thai ribs. While Erin was trying to perform some type of circus-like balancing act with her plate, something caught my eye over by the ribs.

Yep. That, my friend, is a Budweiser. I was quickly reminded me that beer doesn’t have to be pretentious. Even at a festival that thrives on the craft beer craze, folks are going to drink what folks like. Cicerones are a brilliant concept and double chocolate raspberry stouts aged in bourbon barrels are delicious, but when the humidity of summer kicks in, I’ll be enjoying the hell out of a tall boy Bud Light or PBR (which reminds me, I need to check my hipster trap in the Marigny). Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, back to the beer at hand and another pleasant surprise. The VIP tickets also included a booth with exclusive tastings including one of my festival favorites- Chocolate Southern Pecan. As complex as it sounds, the guys over in Kiln simply brewed their normal Southern Pecan recipe with Ghirardelli. Also sampled at this exclusive tasting tent: an excellent representation of a rye pale ale by Sam Adams, Brooklyn Local 2, and a blueberry wheat by NOLA that I’ve been trying to track down for months.

From Rouse’s green onion sausage braised in Sam Adams to boudin stuffed pork chops with an IPA reduction, the focus of the festival was evident even in the beer-centric cooking demonstrations that directly abutted the VIP tents.

The festival ran on for over 5 hours, but the mix of those cooking demos, the endless supply of beer, and the warm gulf breeze off of Lake Pontchartrain made the festival fly by. Before we knew it, we were corralled back onto the bus and shipped back to Avenue Pub like beer fed Kobe beef.

Relying on a second wind from those sloppy, nasty (not that kind of nasty) roast beef poboys and cheese fries from Tracey's (bought with Groupon, of course), a personal encore was called from within.


An old fashioned hill country revue with our fellow Mississippi bretheren was in order. We entered the hallowed doors of Tipitina's, with our free tickets to some seriously sacred tunes billowing from the North Mississippi Allstars on stage and a crowd that seemed to be wearing moon shoes.

A stripped down, acoustic heavy R.L. Burnside cover was followed by a set with a four-stringed cigar box guitar. A somewhat spiritual and certainly appropriate ending to a ridiculously awesome and cheap day, Luther and Cody Dickinson, along with big boy bassist Chris Chew, rocked the big-ass-moon night away with more blues covers for four straight hours, as well as some of their original southern rock-esque catalogue, including one of my personal favorites- Mississippi Boll Weevil.

The Grocery and Broad Street Brewhaha

I had just settled into the recliner for the 11:00 games when I got a call from Burge to meet up with Mims for lunch (apparently calling people by their last names stuck, even after college). Mims was here for what seemed like the 10th time in the past 4 months to do “research” for Saveur, and since grilled fish doesn’t reheat well, I decided to skip the leftover grilled cobia and smoked red snapper tacos we made the night before, and take them up on the poboys at The Grocery on St. Charles.

After scanning through the handwritten menu on the chalkboard, I decided to go with the New Orleans style roast beef poboy. The sandwich lived up to the “New Orleans style” nomenclature. I’m still not sure how or why, but excessive gravy and mayonnaise forms a ridiculously awesome and artery clogging sauce on French bread. As I was finishing off the last few bites with a much needed fork and wandering why I didn’t get my sloppy poboy pressed (The Grocery’s specialty), I heard something I was not expecting to hear.

I’m usually on top of things when it comes to the ins and outs of the goings-on in New Orleans, so when Burge said something about a free beer festival in Mid-City, I was about as confused as Henry Rowengartner when Chet Stedman gave him in-game advice during the Giants game. Between habitually checking out GoNOLA.com, snagging a copy of The Gambit at Rouse’s, and clicking on the Internet Explorer favorites tab that take me to the guys over at Blackened Out and The Beer Buddha, I feel like I always have a halfway decent notion of the happenings throughout the city- especially the free and cheap ones. We drove through Central City, and finally made it to Broad. Even though Burge’s cousin was working the festival for Lazy Magnolia, we didn’t have any real directions. If we wouldn’t have spotted the oversized, inflatable Abita bottle, we would have never found the festival. As we pulled into the overgrown parking lot of a rundown and abandoned grocery store, we began to wander what we had gotten ourselves into. After we followed the crowd up a ramp to a hidden parking lot on top of the sketchy building, we finally caught glimpses of what lied ahead. As we walked under a sign that read “Broad Street Brewhaha” and fixed our eyes on the beer tents and trailers, I began to feel better than Julie Gaffney did when she made the game winning save against Gunner Stahl.

After sampling pints of NOLA Irish Channel Stout and Abita’s new release in their Select series, Rye Pale Ale, we set up shop at the Lazy Magnolia booth. While sampling an Indian Summer or two, I began to reminisce about being the first person to track down Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan in Starkville and people looking at me crazily when I pulled out the party pig. If only I could get paid to talk about beer, especially a Mississippi brewery all day.

We finally drug ourselves away from the Lazy Magnolia tent and Mid-City and headed back Uptown. As if we hadn’t gotten our fill of local craft beer already, we made a detour by Breaux Mart for a party pig of NOLA Blonde. We emptied the miniature keg by the time the Alabama- Mississippi State game (if you watched it, then you know why). With an empty keg and more sorrows to drown, we walked over to The Bulldog for a few pitchers of Dead Guy Ale, which were very appropriate for our degrading state of consciousness. From what I can recollect, the rest of the night was set in the French Quarter, and involved some whipping of the hair back and forth, and a 4 mile walk.