Bayou Teche Brewing at Gulf Brew

Gulf Brew is the annual beer tasting event held in downtown Lafayette that raises money for the Acadian Center for the Arts. They are a wonderful organization that runs a popular local museum dedicated to the area’s art, as well as programs that promote the arts in Lafayette. We were asked to provide a couple of kegs of our LA-31 Biere Pale for the event’s VIP tent.

We have two artists working with our brewery who often show in Lafayette, so how could we turn the ACA down?

The invitation to supply the biere gave us just over a month to brew, ferment, age and package our biere.

It put us on a pretty tight schedule.

Things always seem to go wrong when you are on a tight schedule.

Fortunately we had most of the raw ingredients we needed to produce a batch of our flagship ale. I had been planning to replenish our yeast supply so I took this opportunity and placed an order for an overnight shipment – confirming with the supplier we use that they had the yeast in stock. Somewhere between my placing the order and their filling the order their computers crashed.

Of course I did not know of the snafu until the next day when we did not receive our order.

This was late Friday afternoon, meaning the order could not be shipped until Monday, arriving in Arnaudville on Tuesday.

A five day delay – A very tight schedule now but still doable.

The yeast arrived late Tuesday afternoon and then we brewed up 1 barrel (31 gallons) of Biere Pale. Man it was great, finally being able to brew up a batch alongside my brother. And fortunately the brew day went by without a single hitch. The wort was racked to the fermenter and we pitched the newly arrived yeast. Our ale takes about two weeks in the fermenter, so I had a little time to do maintenance around the brewery.

Right off the bat I accidentally demolished a CO2 regulator. I called our regular supplier and tried to order an emergency replacement.

Back ordered.


I scrambled to find one, finally stumbling on one locally a week later.

We transferred the contents of the fermenters to our cold storage tanks, to carbonate and further clear and age the biere.

I attached a full tank of CO2 to the new regulator, opened the valve and called it quits for the day. Inspecting the tanks the next day, I noticed I had forgotten to tighten the regulator to the tank, in the process emptying a CO2 tank in to the atmosphere, inadvertently enlarging my carbon footprint. Yep.

So I drove to Lafayette and filled the tank. When I got back I hooked everything up, making sure this time to tighten the regulator tight-tight.

Still with all of the snafus, setbacks and cussing, we had just enough time to sample and get our LA-31 into the kegs before the Gulf Brew.

We set up Saturday without a single hitch. The volunteers and employees of ACA were groovy and helpful.

While waiting for the doors to open, we visited with the guys from the Dead Yeast Society (Lafayette’s home brew club). Those guys really know their beer and had the most awesome setup! They also had very tasty beers (including one gallon of a vanilla-bourbon infused beer that could only be compared to a liquid praline). We are going to have to spend more of our free time hanging out with and picking those fellows’ brains.

We also visited with the folks from NOLA brewery (New Orleans) and from Lazy Magnolia brewery (Mississippi). Both breweries have given us so much advice, encouragement and compliments on our beer. I don’t think we can ever hope to return the favors in full. We do plan on making a trip very soon to visit both of their breweries, as well as to the Heiner Brau in Covington.

Damn their beers are good!

Then the doors opened and it was non-stop until closing. We were flooded with request from Lafayette’s most passionate beer drinkers for a taste of our biere. I know we had come close to perfection of our LA-31 recipe when so many people took a taste and requested a second or third glass before giving up their place in line. We had a large number of tasters come back with their own, larger cup for savoring.


I know we met, visited and served at least 250 people, because that is how many of our koozies and business cards we gave out (note to self, order more Koozies). We got to share our vision of our brewery, and the values and importance of paring good, real beer as an accompaniment to our Cajun and Creole cuisine.

We had a great time, drank a lot of outstanding beer and we met so many people who shared our vision of what great beer can do for our culture.

I hear that the ACA sold nearly 2500 tickets and raised beaucoup money for their organization. The folks at our fledgling brewery and also those involved in the art scene in Lafayette thank them for all they do and eagerly await next year’s event. If you can’t wait that long, we will be serving samples of our biere at Arnaudville’s Oktoberfest on September 26th, and at the Jefferson Community hospital’s Beer Tasting event on October 16th.

Sportsman’s Paradise

After mid-morning Mass and a late lunch, my daughter and I walked to our backyard pond. Already there fishing were my brothers and a sister-in-law. My little girl picked up a pink Disney Princess fishing pole and I picked up a very cold Corona and wrapped it up in a tight fitting, new koozie.

Yep, our black Bayou Teche Brewing koozies look good.

My little angler needed some bait so I pinched out a live cricket from the bucket and slipped it on the hook.

My youngest brother pulled in a nice 17 inch bass on an artificial worm. Minutes later his wife reeled in one an inch longer. Neither my brother nor his wife spilled a drop of their Coronas while fighting their fish to land.

The fish remaining in the pond kept safely nibbling the crickets off of my daughters hook.

While holding a freshly-koozied Abita Amber my other brother had earlier told us that he had a taste in his mouth for fried bream. The old folks around here called that fish a patassa, and he was hauling them in as soon as his cricketed-hooks hit the water. Our younger brother and his wife pulled in several more bass.

I grabbed another Corona and put yet another cricket on my girl’s hook. All the two of us had managed to do so far was feed crickets to the fish my bothers and sister-in-law had not yet caught.

After my little girl got bored, we walked back to the house to get cleaned up. My wife and I then took her to see a movie in Lafayette.

My brothers cleaned and then fried the fish up with some French fries. They and my parents ate at our communal outdoor kitchen.

That night, after I got back from the movie, I carried my sleeping little girl upstairs and put her in bed. I went back downstairs and poured myself a tall glass of Abita Jockamo IPA and reflected on the day.

As much as things have changed in Acadiana, one thing that has not is the fun you can have taking kids fishing.

My father and our uncle would take my brothers and me fishing many weekends when we where young. My uncle would load up his metal Jax ice chest with cold beer and pop, and then put it and a paper sack full of Vienna sausages, potted meat and Evangeline Maid bread in a light blue wooden bass boat. We would trailer it to nearby Henderson and spend a day on the water. We would stay whether the fish were biting or not, heading home only after the adults’ beer was gone.

I look forward to taking my young daughter fishing again. We are lucky to live in an area where there is so many places to throw your bait - Louisiana is truly the Sportsman’s Paradise. With the introduction of our LA-31, which really compliments fried fish and French fries, we hope to make it a Beer Drinkers’ Paradise as well.

Beer is our Canvass

Saturday evening we handed out samples of an incredibly hopped-up version of our usual LA 31 Biere Pale. The occasion for this special brew was my son’s art show at Salon NV in Lafayette during this month’s Second Saturday Art Walk

If you have never been to Lafayette’s art walk, make plans to go next month – you’ll meet a lot of fascinating people and see some amazing art.

And maybe get some free beer.

The beer we were pouring was a highly amped up IPA; we use a late hopping process which gives our beer a mellow bitterness, and an extremely intense hop flavor.

My son’s paintings were an eclectic mix of what I’d call Southern Pop art. Each of his paintings were on giant canvases, including his surprise for my brothers and me – a four by three foot interpretation of our LA 31 Biere label.

The owner of the salon had put out tasty bottles of red wine and some very nice cheeses and crackers.

Supporters of my son’s art brought iced pitchers of gin spiked juices and boxes of fruit punch for the kids.

The weather was very pleasant, so Jefferson Street was crowded with people strolling the art scene.

Nearly everyone who stopped by the show sampled a glass or two of our beer. As we handed them out we had a lot of great conversation with people wanting to know about real beer. We were somewhat surprised with all of the positive feedback, as this was an extremely hoppy and somewhat bitter beer – the largest amount of hops we have ever used in any of our recipes.

As we picked up afterwards, we noticed that every plastic beer cup was drank dry – the keg was drained as well. The very bitter beer was clearly a big hit.

As was my son’s paintings.

The first painting sold that night was that large image of the LA 31 label. A couple walked in, sampled some beer while admiring the painting. They purchased it before I could get a bid in (I was moving slow as I had consumed a bit of wine, beer and Gin & juice myself). That painting would have looked good in our office.

My son’s art reflects the commitment he has to his craft. He is passionate about his paintings, paintings that reflect his bold aesthetic, and his courageous sense of place and humor. They are audacious and larger than life, both dimensionally and artistically.

We learned a lot from our visit with Lafayette’s beer-drinking art lovers last Saturday night. It prods us to renew our commitment to our own craft. We will continue to tweak our flagship ale, LA 31 and perhaps introduce our own larger than life artwork, an over the top IPA.

Boudin Eggroll?

Wikipedia defines fusion cuisine as:

Fusion cuisine combines elements of various culinary traditions while not fitting specifically into any. The term generally refers to the innovations in many contemporary restaurant cuisines since the 1970s.

Louisianaians have been fusing cuisines since the 1760s.

French, Spanish, German and African foods and preperations have combined to give us the Cajun and Creole foods we enjoy today.

There is also the one Cajun who commingled the activities of cooking and drinking beer. After consuming probably way too much beer, he shoved a half-full beer can in a chicken's rear end cavity. Utilizing the chicken's legs and the beer can, he stood the whole thing up tripod style and barbecued the contraption.

Those of us who have tried a moist, tender and flavorful "tipsy chicken" know that by combining two activities - drinking beer and barbecuing chicken - the innovative cook yielded a fused product - a creation that became greater than the sum of its parts.

But a boudin eggroll?

My brother told me about his quest for the boudin eggroll at Janice's grocery in Sunset. They have it advertised on the menu, but every time he tried to buy one they were sold out.

Always sold out? I had to get one.

Janice's has some of the best boudin in Acadiana. They also have an extensive beer selection and a sign over the deli counter that says if you are talking on a cell phone they will not take your order or check you out.

I love shopping at Janice's.

It took me three trips but they finally had boudin eggrolls tempting me from under the heat lamp - you have to get there early, way before the lunch rush. I actually purchased the last two of them and also a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Drinking several bottles of a hoppy American interpretation of an English Pale Ale, and polishing off spicy Cajun sausages enclosed in Asian wrappers put me in a fusion cuisine fueled, multiculteral heaven.

The boudin was well seasoned with an abundance of cayenne pepper, and the eggroll wrapper solved some of the physical problems of eating boudin on the run. Pairing it with a pale ale was a near perfect match, though next time I may try a Pilsner Urquell to help calm the heat of all that seasoning.

I am sure my brothers were working hard on the brewery building the whole time I was doing research (eating rich boudin and drinking way too much beer) for this blog post. It's looking like they are nearly halfway done. I'll repay them with some ice cold beer and hot boudin eggrolls this coming weekend.

If I can find some.

Status of the Brewery

“When are ya’ll gonna start selling biere?”

 

Short answer – hopefully soon.

 

I recently read an article about a very low-budget zombie movie premiering at the Cannes film festival.  It was shot on a shoestring budget of seventy dollars.

 

Seventy dollars.

 

The director counted on volunteer zombies, borrowed film equipment and makeup, and the labor of friends and volunteers to help keep his cost so low.  By all accounts the movie is a well-crafted, though low budget flick.

 

I talked to a representative of the trade association for craft beers and he said that most small breweries fail because they can’t service the debt that they incur starting up.  We have decided to forgo this debt and go the low budget route.

 

So like the zombie filmmaker, we too are resorting to begging and borrowing to build our low-budget brewery – though it will cost us a little more than seventy dollars to finish.

 

We got a very much used intermodal container from the Union Pacific railroad – for free!  These are the containers you see on railcars and on the backs of big diesel trucks.  Ours if forty feet long by eight feet wide.  The railroad had used this container as an office for its railroad police so the railcar already had windows, a cutout for an air conditioner, and a hole for a household front door cut in the side.  The car was the perfect size for our brewery project. 

 

We jacked the railcar up and leveled it on brick pillars.  We grinded some rust off and patched some holes in the roof.  A lot of caulk and Kool Seal later and the container is leak-proof.  However, I had a buddy of mine from work weld some angle iron on the top so that later we can put up some joists and rafters for a more permanent roof.

 

We did this work on typical Louisiana spring days.  Man was it hot and humid.

 

Then we went to work on the interior.  The floors were made of solid thick oak strips, but were in pretty sad shape.  The wood was buckled and rotten through in spots, so we ripped it out.  We also removed the plywood walls and then pressure-washed the interior.  All of the bare metal was then primed with Rust-Oleum.

 

Up to this point all of our volunteer zombies have been rewarded with cold beer.

 

In the next week or so we should start laying down the plywood sub-floor and then insulating the walls.

 

With proper budgeting and the help of friends, relatives and volunteers we plan to have enough work completed so that we can start brewery operations by the end of August. 

 

Just gotta keg a lot more beer.

A Perfect Sunday

 Got up early and drank Mello Joy with my wife.  Through our kitchen window we watched a big blue heron enjoy the backyard pond.

 

Just before meeting my brothers at the brewery for a workday, I walked through our vegetable garden.  I noticed our first tomato of the year was near red enough to pick, we have some cucumbers getting close as well.

 

I knew the keg of LA 31 Bière Pâle in my fridge was nearly empty.

 

After a hot and hard days work of scraping, sanding, pressure washing, and priming our fledgling brewery, my brothers looked forward to tall glasses of Bière Pâle.  However the tap sputtered nothing but foam and CO2 – and then just CO2.

 

My brothers looked at me accusingly.

 

My wife hurriedly sliced some cold leftover roast beef and set it out with some salami slices.  She also put out provolone and Swiss cheese, as well as a tub of garlic and herb goat cheese.  A couple of boxes of buttery-tasting crackers completed the setting.

 

Now what to drink?

 

Our young daughter and niece and their friends were over, so we set them up with several party platters of our spread and some freshly brewed iced tea.  The girls giggled and ate, played and watched Harry Potter on the living room television.

 

I had beer in the fridge.  I usually have Abita’s Amber and Jockamo IPA on hand.  We also had some of their Strawberry Lager.  We had some Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan ale from Mississippi and some Bohemia from Mexico.   And I still had a few bottles of North Coast Brewing’s Silver Jubilee.

 

Any of these beers would be delightful on a good Sunday afternoon.

 

Instead we tapped a keg of one of our experimental biers, code-named Duck Blind ale.  Our idea was to brew an easy drinking beer that you could bring to the camp or Holly Beach.   A beer you could drink outdoors while eating boudin or cracklings, or maybe even a bologna sandwich.

 

As this was our initial batch, we knew we still had a lot of tweaking to get the recipe right.

 

I don’t know if it was the good company or the way that the beer and food conspired to amplify each other, but we drank a lot.  We ate a lot too.  We talked and planned – we laughed and dreamed.  Reminisced and joked.

 

Our mother and father stopped by for a visit.  Dad even drank a short glass with us.

 

When we were kids our parents would take us to visit their parents in the country every Sunday.  All of our uncles, aunts and cousins would be there.  In those days, Louisiana still had Blue Laws that prevented most people from working on Sundays, it was a common day of rest that every member of extended families shared.  Our family would eat at Papa and Grandma’s house every Sunday.  While the adults visited we played in the barnyard.

 

Did you ever stick chicken feathers in a dry corncob for a make-shift helicopter?  I have to round some up for our girls next week.

 

Those Sundays were close to Utopia.

 

This past Sunday was close too.  Here’s to perfecting Duck Blind Ale and the return of the perfect Sunday afternoon.

 

  À votre santé.

How We See Bière

Currently, we are Louisiana’s smallest brewery.

 

When we were kids, all of the adults spoke French to each other.  And for a reason we could not figure out, it seemed that they laughed a lot more then when they spoke English.  It was an infectious, joyous laughter that often melded with the French words until it became an entirely different and near impossible language to interpret.

 

As the years have gone by, we hear less and less of the French being spoken.  And we hear a lot less of that joyous laughter.  I wonder if there is some correlation.

 

I also do not remember ever seeing my uncles or their friends drinking a Budweiser, Miller beer or Coors Lite.  They drank some Falstaff, Jax or Dixie beer brewed in New Orleans – or maybe a Pearl beer from Texas.   These regional beers were much more flavorful than the bland national brews that would be pushed into our local stores’ refrigerators in the late seventies.

 

We’ve been thinking about these things so we could let you know our vision for our brewery.  How do we define its’ success?  We know our success won’t be measured by selling more bottles of beer than anyone else – I mean we are Louisiana’s smallest brewery.  To sell that much beer you have to compete on price.  You have to water down your products and use as much of the least expensive adjuncts as you can get away with.  We do not choose to use synthetic hop oils (or synthetic anything for that matter) nor filter the life out of our beers.  We want to sell an honest, natural, full-flavored beer – a beer that does more than quench thirsts, it nourishes souls.

 

Our vision of success is to sell a few beers that stimulate a good conversation about a contented, well-lived life.  We would like to remember and learn from our roots and educate our newly made friends on the joy of drinking real beer and how to pair it with Cajun and Creole cuisine.

 

Our goal is nothing short of joie de la vie, and to do this we must stay Louisiana’s smallest brewery.

 

À votre santé.