Pecans are falling.

Took a break and spent a very wet October morning picking up pecans with my little girl. When we were done, the two of us sat on the porch of the brewery taking turns cracking them open with an empty German beer bottle. We ate pecans till we were full like the winter ready squirrels in the Brewery’s nearby trees.

I guess the significance of the beginning of autumn is different to people in other places, but in Acadiana it means we start picking, shelling and putting away pecans. In Germany they think of drinking Marzenbier at the Oktoberfest.

Marzenbier was what was in that empty bottle we used to crack open those pecans.

My brothers’ and my childhoods’ autumn weekends were spent picking sacks of pecans at our grandparent’s farm near Arnaudville. Most of those pecans were to be sold, but some were kept to be put away for the upcoming year’s pralines, fudge, pecan pies and cakes.

The first Oktoberfest was in Munich on October 18, 1810 celebrating the commemoration of the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwing and Princess Therese and also the introduction Marzen style of beer. Of course now, two hundred years later Bavarians celebrate the release of the new batch of Marzen beers at Oktoberfest and not the royal wedding.

Abita brews a celebratory Harvest Pecan Beer every autumn. Though not as good a use of pecans as pralines, fudge or pies, it is a very tasty brew. If Oktoberfest would have been invented in a pecan harvesting Louisiana instead of Bavaria, I imagine it is the kind of beer we would serve.

Our little town of Arnaudville had its first ever Oktoberfest last weekend. We brewed and served some German style Kolsch beer to go along with the mutzbratten, bratwurst, German potato salad, red cabbage, brotchen and German chocolate cake. Though not a style of beer we typically brew, or one served at your average Oktoberfest, it complements the hearty German barbequed meal rather well. There was a very large crowd there for the festivities, which surprised the organizers as there was an LSU football game that night.

There were complementary bottles of German Riesling – feeling German and only wanting to insure there was plenty of our beer for the guests, I consumed several of these wines myself.

In Germany, before refrigeration, it was risky to brew beer in the summer due to the hot weather and possible bacterial infection of the beer. Brewing ended with the arrival of spring, and began again in the fall. Thus, the last beers brewed before the warm months were brewed in March (Marzen). The beers were kept in cold caves for storage over the hot spring and summer months, and also brewed with higher alcohol content so they would keep. This is the beer of Oktoberfest and marzenbier is full bodied, rich, toasty and copper colored with high alcohol content.

Special autumn beers are a newfound tradition for American craft brewers as well. I just had a six-pack of New Belgium Brewery’s Hoptober ale smuggled in for me. Man was that beer fantastic. It tastes like an ale version of a Marzenbier (which is a lager), amped up with tons of hops. The Bayou Teche Brewery should be working a little harder on our autumn celebratory beer – we are tweaking a recipe and plan on having it on tap for Arnaudville’s Oktoberfest next year. The beer is a Top-Secret, Manhattan-style Project and will be like nothing else out there.

Just gotta stop taking so many breaks to pick pecans.

Months with R

The Saints are in pre-season and LSU played late Saturday night. We’ll be able to start hunting teal next Saturday. After a summers worth of days by the pool, our girls are back at school.

Shortly, Roberts Cove will have its Germanfest; Arnaudville will have an Oktoberfest, and New Iberia a Gumbo cook-off.

Though it is still hot, it is sure starting to feel like it’s cooling down - not cool enough for gumbo, unless you really turn down the thermostat.

The grass is not growing as fast as it was during the hot and wet days of summer. Now, we should only have to mow once a week, as opposed to the bi-weekly trims the lawn has been getting.

We still have a lot of mosquitoes in the yard, but thank the good Lord; we have not had a hurricane.

It is September in Acadiana. We have waited for September for four months. It is the first month with an R in it since April.

For the first time in four months, it is safe to eat raw oysters raw again.

We like to go to a good local restaurant or maybe to one of Abbeville’s oyster bars and throw back a dozen oysters, washing them down with ice cold beer. Unfortunately the beer selections at these establishments are usually pretty sparse – about the finest beer on the menu may be a Michelob.

Sometimes my youngest brother will get a sackful of oysters and using his trusty oyster knife, pry those shells open at our outdoor kitchen. You get oyster buzz eating so many oysters so fresh and a brisk brininess taste of the Gulf of Mexico. Any remaining oysters from the sack are fried the next day for afternoon poor boys and oyster platters.

Shucking that many oysters sure tends to make you thirsty. We have the advantage of drinking beer that is as fresh as our oysters – strait from the keg, LA-31 Biere Pale. The hand crafted beer accompanies the oysters and quenches the thirst, but its mellow, refined hop bitterness does not overwhelm the delicate taste of the oysters. Garrett Oliver in his book “The Brewmaster’s Table” recommends an Irish Stout with Oysters. We usually enjoy most of his recommended pairings of food and beer, but this time we are unquestionably skeptical. We will try some Guinness this weekend with a sack of oysters, but I am pretty sure we will quickly tap a new keg of LA-31.

Saving some for the teal gumbo next weekend.

"What we’re dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law" - Buford T. Justice

I smuggled some beer in from Texas yesterday.

Because of the arcane way beer is distributed in Louisiana there are many beers that are never brought into our state for sale. One brewery’s beer that I have been itching to try is Dogfish Head out of Delaware. I have not been able to locate a six pack in Louisiana and a cursory check of their website confirmed my suspicions – their beer is not sold here.

But they are distributed in Texas.

So that is how I wound up at an upscale wine and liquor store in the Woodlands Texas, looking for Dogfish head 60 minute IPA. I ran out of the store with my newly purchased six pack camouflaged in a brown paper sack, and drove straight to my hotel.

Once in my room, I whipped out my trusty Swiss army knife and pried out the well-worn bottle opener. After getting the cap off the bottle, it seemed the room was filled with intensely hopped incense. I knew this beer was going to be good - and bitter.

Before I took the first sip I amused myself with the idea that most men’s wives worry that there is a woman in the hotel room with their husband away on business. My wife instead is concerned with how much money I am going to spend on beer.

A mistress might be cheaper.

Man, that beer was exceptionally good. During the course of the evening I savored the other 5 bottles. After finishing the last one I considered not brushing my teeth so I could enjoy the flavor just a little longer.

The Dogfish Head brewery makes some unique, extreme and outstanding beer. Their motto is “Off-centered ales for off-centered people.” The beer I was drinking was an IPA with an innovative bittering technique that the brewers there thought up. Traditionally beers are brewed with two major hop additions - One very early for bitterness and one near the end of the boil for flavor. Their technique adds very small hop additions continuously throughout the boil. This makes for an IPA that is hyper-infused with hop flavor and “slaps your mama” with its bitterness.

It is a very different beer from our LA-31. We only use late hop additions that gives our beer a great hop flavor yet leaves smooth and mellow hop bitterness. I think the Dogfish would go great pared up with American style pepperoni pizza, a spicy meatball sub, or cheese enchiladas. We like to think our LA-31 really compliments our regions more refined cuisine, like gumbo, jambalaya or sauce picante.

The next morning I loaded my car up with several cases of the Dogfish Head IPA, a couple of another beer of theirs, Raison D’Être, and a six pack of New Belgium Brewery’s Fat Tire. Keeping an eye out for Smokey and singing “East bound and down, loaded up and trucking” I felt like Jerry Reed in Smokey and the Bandit. I smuggled my load of beer from Texas across the Louisiana line all the way to our Arnaudville brewery. There are still some cooling in the beer fridge now, tempting me still to forgo brushing my teeth before bed tonight.

So next time you are in Texas you might want to pick up some beer that is impossible to buy and enjoy in Louisiana. When safely home with your smuggled contraband, toast your inner Bandit, Snowman or Frog (Burt Reynolds, Jerry Reed, and Sally Field). And check out freelouisianabeer.blogspot.com for some things you can do to help us change Louisiana’s beer distribution laws.

Brewery update: Had a couple of small setbacks this week, one with the zoning folds. It seems our building was a little too far back from the state highway and would be on land zoned Agriculture. After taking out some brewery equipment supplies and carpentry tools we moved the operation a little closer to the road. We have not heard back from the government on our license, but they have cashed the check for our bond. That makes us think we should be legal soon. Even with the setbacks we are still shooting to have some beer for sale for November.

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.