As we’ve said before, renting a car is not necessary in NOLA. The city is pretty compact, and all the breweries and other touristy things are walkable, bikeable or uberable. However, if you want to cross another state off the list, you will be renting a car.
It’s day four of our NOLA beerventuring, so naturally we decided to rent a car for the day and head to Mississippi. There are several breweries dotted along the southern coast of Mississippi, but we settled on three MS breweries between Kiln and Biloxi.
Mississippi
While you could drive straight to Biloxi, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not making a pit stop at the Lazy Magnolia Brewery in Kiln, MS. Founded in 2003, Lazy Magnolia brews their beers with an ode to southern living. Our flight of four consisted of Southern Pecan, 2nd Brunch Hazy Mimosa Pale Ale, Salted Caramel Pecan and Cherry Pickin’. The Southern Pecan brown ale, one of their flagships, is made with whole roasted pecans. If you like pecans, double down and try the Salted Caramel Pecan, a 9% imperial brown ale with a lot of caramel notes.
The Brunch Hazy Mimosa wasn’t our favorite hazy of the trip, but it was a nice juicy pale ale. The Cherry Pickin’ on the other hand is a must try malt beverage. Yeah, it’s not a beer but the sour cherry and lemon drink was a perfect game changer between brews.
Chandeleur Island Brewing Company in Gulfport was our next stop on this Mississippi brewery crawl. This brewery in the heart of Gulfport offers a wide array of flagships, seasonals, sours and “conservation” collaborations. Three of the four brews we had fell under the well made, but average category. Tarponator, Magic Hour and Ole Buddy are a well-made Winter Lager, Brut IPA, and Hazy IPA but nothing too crazy.
The best brew of the flight was from their Gulf Coast Sour Series. The Raspberry Ginger sour comes exactly as advertised. There is a hearty amount raspberry and a kick of ginger in this tart delight.
Frankie J once said “Sugar, Sugar, how you get so fly” and now we know that he was referring to Fly Llama Brewing in Biloxi. This fun taproom is adorned in tons of llama art varying from realistic to abstract. We’re not exactly art people, but we perused the museum while sipping our next flight.
Our flight of four consisted of Moma, Diego, Key Lime Pie and Sumi Rainbow. Moma, Key Lime and Sumi were all in the sour variety making Melissa a very happy person. Despite its super ugly color, the pleasantly tart guava fruited sour ale Moma was easily the Queen of the flight. The close second was the Key Lime because we will always have an affinity for key lime flavored brews.
Unfortunately for us, there are five (or more) breweries between Lazy Magnolia Brewing and Fly Llama Brewing. However, since it was a driving day, we had to skip these. If you end up doing a Biloxi brewery crawl please let us know what we missed!
Did you miss Parts 1-3 of NOLA? Click Here!
