LA 31 Oddessy, Part 1

Slightly across from our home’s side door is a small grove of bald cypress trees that we planted about thirteen years ago. Along with the live oak trees, crepe myrtles, and Southern Magnolias we transplanted, and a few very old native pecans, our yard is taking on the appearance of a Louisiana themed arboretum. In that small stand of cypress is a single tree whose leaves sprout long before any others even try to. I’ve always taken the arrival of that particular tree’s leaves as a sign of the end of winter.
It also signals the start of pleasant motorcycling weather.
Since our first frost last year, I have squandered away several hours studying that tree for any evidence of the neon-bright green needles that only the earliest-sprouting of springtime cypress trees have. I know the old Cajun folks around Arnaudville had their ways to tell if winter was truly over, my grandparents waited for the pecan tree leaves sprouted before they planted any spring vegetables, and I know some folks wait until they saw their first springtime robin.
But for me and the very non-agrarian pursuits I have intended for my old Harley Springer, the sign I’ve been waiting for is that lone cypress tree’s leaves.
Guess what appeared Monday.
I pulled the cover off of my bike and removed the battery tender – I won’t need that for about nine more months. I replaced the black leather saddle and tightened the nuts that hold it down - checked the oil and air, and then pushed her out onto our gravel driveway.
The sky was that distinctive springtime blue romanticized on the ceilings of countless Southern porches. I fired up the V-twin engine and let her warm. Then after swinging my legs and beer belly over the saddle, I raced down the driveway and made the left turn left towards Opelousas.
Opelousas is one of the oldest towns in Louisiana. During her earliest days of French and then later, Spanish colonial rule, Opelousas was the headquarters of the Poste des Opélousas. During the War Between the States, after Les Americains captured Baton Rouge, Opelousas briefly became the Confederate capitol of the state (before the Yankees chased the state government up to Shreveport). It is because of her significant role in Louisiana’s history that Opelousas has so many significant homes, churches and buildings – and also many great old restaurants serving some of the finest Cajun and Creole food in Acadiana.
However it is not the historic scenery or fine restaurants that lured me to Opelousas on my first ride of year. Opelousas is where the Louisiana State Highway known as LA-31 begins.
Beginning just west of Interstate 49 is the short Opelousas stretch of the highway. A longstanding white metal sign with a reflective green silhouette of Louisiana welcomes me to what here is called the LA-31 Spur. The state highway department is unhurriedly swapping these old green and white signs with more contemporary looking black and white ones. I hope they are not too competent in their efforts; I will miss seeing the occasional old ones.
Opelousas’ LA-31 spur is pretty much the unsurprising in-town stretch of highway strewn with the McDonald’s/Wendy’s/Burger King/Taco Bell/Texaco/Chevron and Shell signs familiar to small towns this close to a major interstate exit. Sputtering east, my old Harley only has to endure three red lights worth of fast food anti-nirvana, a quick duck under I-49, and scooting past a Wal-Mart Supercenter, and she is where she wants to be – in fifth gear on a rural Cajun Highway.
After about a mile I hang a left towards Evangeline Downs. Twisting on the throttle, I roll down the boulevard that leads to the racetrack. Though it is pretty early in the morning there already are a few jockeys leisurely riding their horses. While parking close to the track I wonder who is being warmed up, the jockeys or the quarter-horses.
I walked across the large black-topped parking lot and enter the casino. I buy myself an incredible cup of very dark roasted coffee and am then offered real cream to add to it. Since it is my first cup of what is usually a multi-cup day I drink it very leisurely. I feel obliged to top it off (it is that good) and make my second cup of the day. Though there are slot machine lights flashing and bells continuously dinging, I find the din somewhat relaxing. In the beer business you are often on the road and drinking bad coffee out of a Styrofoam cups is something you have to endure. I sometimes forget how good honest coffee in a cup made of porcelain is.
I lazily meander back across the parking lot watching the riders on their playfully trotting horses. I’ve really got a lot of things to get caught up on at the still-under-construction new and larger brewery, but I decide to watch the jockeys a little while longer. I know I’m the one goofing off, but leaning against the saddle of my iron steed and watching the hard working jockeys seems at the time to be a very productive way to waste much of my morning.
Getting back on the 31, I roll east about another mile or so and then have make a right turn. From now on the highway pretty much follows the Bayou Teche on one bank or another all the way to New Iberia. The Teche was named after the Chitimacha word for snake – their oral tradition is that their warriors had slayed a giant snake whose tail began at from what is now Port Barre and zigzagged all the way to his head in Morgan City. In its death throes the snake wiggled and died – carving out the Bayou now known as the Teche.
For motorcyclists this is interesting story, because that dying snake’s bayou makes for a winding curvy road following her banks. Also, this northern stretch of the LA-31 may be one of the best built highways in Louisiana. She is paved almost as smoothly as the German autobahns – something that is unheard of on the pothole afflicted and patched-up roads of South Louisiana.
I pass farmhouses with Redbud trees and azaleas just starting their springtime bloom, and there are still a few camellias dropping the last of their winter flowers. The lawns of the farmhouses have grass that is that shade of St. Augustine green you only see in early March.
Rolling through Prairie Laurent I pass the first home whose yard has a statue of the Virgin Mary in front. At one time nearly every home in Cajun Louisiana would have had such an outdoor shrine to the Blessed Virgin. Though the area is still devoutly Catholic, we are not as much so as when I was a kid. I will see many more statues of her as I roll south.
The tale is that the Ursuline nuns in New Orleans prayed to the Virgin to deliver us a victory over the British during their invasion of New Orleans during the War of 1812. In their prayers they offered to put up statues of her if we were able to keep the British out. After the ragtag and vastly outnumbered army led by Andrew Jackson defeated the British, statues of the Blessed Mother were erected all over French Louisiana.
Just after Prairie Laurent I have to slow down behind a rusty old Dodge pickup truck pulling an even rustier old-time steel horse trailer with two cows inside. Not even a minute later, the cows spray me with flying urine – I figure they must be headed to a slaughterhouse and are just trying to get back at me for not being a vegetarian. Most folks at this point would worry about possible health consequences or how the dousing of urine affected their personal aroma - Harley riders are more worried about what the urine does to finish of their motorcycles.
Passing the truck and trailer, I watch farmers preparing their fields for the milo and soybeans they will be planting in a few weeks. Milo and soybeans are what most of the farmers plant on the fields that surround this northernmost stretch of the highway - those crops and (unfortunately for the paint on my Harley) cattle ranches. This is still a very agrarian part of Acadiana.
I pass a few signs warning me to slow to 50, then 45, and finally down to 25 and another that welcomes me to the old town of Leonville. The highway crosses over the Bayou Teche on a small, low cement bridge and right there near her east bank is Champagne’s grocery. In this part of Louisiana Champagne’s is pronounced Shom – pines, and the boudin there is one of the best in Acadiana. I walk back to the rear of the store, near their meat counter and order link of jalapeño boudin. I pay and head out to the bike in the parking lot. Leaning on the saddle and propped up against my still warm bike, I devour my breakfast link and wash it down with a very cold Coca Cola. I stuff the wax paper into the outdoor trashcan near the gas pumps and notice that it is filled with pork fat stained wax paper – It appears I’m not the only one eating boudin in Leonville this morning.
I wipe my hands on my jeans and fire up the Springer. I turn back onto the LA-31 and head south. There are a lot of old homes here in Leonville. I was told once you can tell the approximate age of homes in French Louisiana by counting the front doors. The old Creoles fell out of political prominence in the State government sometimes after the First World War. After that the French language was outlawed in our schools and all things Creole fell out of favor in much of the state – that included architecture. The old Cajun and Creole homes had two doors placed side by side on the front porch. After the French style fell out of favor, homes were built here in a more American style, with a single front door. Some homes were of course renovated later with a single door, but most were not. So as you ride on LA-31 you can spot the approximate age of these homes - two doors is usually a home built prior to World War Two.
I notice beaucoup homes with two front doors today.
I pass through many miles of farmland and the occasional rural business or country home. This is a beautiful and relaxing chunk of the highway. The roadwork itself is not as pristine as the most northern part of the LA-31, but it is not near as bad compared to most of Louisiana’s other highways. I enter Arnaudville and a sign enlightens me that the city’s sister cities are Jausiers, France and Jumelage Belgium. You overhear a lot of Cajun French still spoken in Arnaudville, I’d guess more in public than most anywhere else in Louisiana. The highway tees right over one bride, and then jogs immediately left over another – one bridge crosses the Teche and the other the Bayou Fusilier. Right after the second bridge you are back on the west bank of the Teche. I pull into Myran’s Masion de Manger. Whenever one of the multitudes of natural disasters strikes South Louisiana (hurricane, flood, tornado or Saint’s loss) folks call the brewery to see if Myran and his restaurant are OK. His small restaurant is famous for its boiled crawfish and that is what I am here for today.
I order a platter and drink a pint of our LA-31 beer. The crawfish are awesome (Myran offers a seasoning mix for you to make any last minute adjustments to your crawfish – I don’t think anyone has ever needed to) and the beer compliments the spicy crustaceans. It is easy to waste away an afternoon at Myron’s, eating perfectly seasoned crawfish, drinking craft beer and looking at the Teche lazily roll through the restaurant’s back windows – but if I don’t get back to work I’ll have a spouse and two brothers pretty upset with me. I ride back to our brewery, just on the other side of the Bayou from Myran’s. On the ride back home I’m already planning the second leg of my LA-31 odyssey – I think I can squeeze in a road trip soon from Arnaudville to Lake Martin.
If my wife or brothers don’t hide my Harley’s keys to keep me at work.

Update, Rambling Edition

You know I’d have to say that the biggest blessing for my family since we started Bayou Teche Brewing is all of the cool new friends we have made in the last two years. Though many of these new friends are in the beer industry, most are involved in wonderful things that have very little to do with hawking beer.
Last Saturday, our very good friend (who also apparently knows everyone else in Louisiana), evil genius, party animal and well-connected impresario, Todd Mouton put together one of the finest soirées I have ever attended. Dubbed the Saint Street Carnival: Revelry de Rio (Todd always comes up with the most ingenious names) the happening was on the night of the Lafayette’s Krewe de Rio Parade- always held on the Saturday that falls a week prior to Mardi Gras proper. Held at the Saint Street Inn – there was a fantastic menu of Brazilian Barbeque and a way cool Tikki Bar out front, and the last three cases in Lafayette of our Courir de Mardi Gras beer, plus our Mello Dubbel coffee beer on tap inside. Valcour Records provided the live music. Before the Parade the Pine Leaf Boys Trio played some addictively foot-stomping traditional Cajun music. After the Parade Corey Lil Pop Ledet Zydecoed the night away, protected from the bitter wind by strategically placed sheets of visqueen, which decorated the front porch of the restaurant until the food and beer were gone. Saint Street Inn was packed until closing time – even though the temperature dipped down to near 28 degrees. Oh yea, the Krewe of Rio Parade was fantastic – the marching bands were awesome.
The Saint Street Inn in Lafayette is the kind of a place that you wish you would have thought to open. Nathan Stubbs and Mary Tutwiler have wholly embraced the farm to table movement and are serving up ingenious takes on our South Louisiana foods and locally sourced ingredients – with hip--folky and art-filled decor. Their sausage po-boy is my unsurpassed favorite, the sausages are sliced into rounds, and then browned, maximizing the surface area for those dark caramel, maillard reaction flavors Cajuns crave on cuts of meat. There are a lot of marvelous things on the menu – the BLT sliders (boudin lettuce and tomato) are awesome, and I hear they are working on Cajun s’mores made with graham cracker, marshmallow, chocolate and a graton (pork crackling) – umm, I don’t know if I am the inspiration or the target market for the Cajun s’more, I just know I’ll be eating the rumored treats when Saint Street releases them!
Our noble yet incredibly hip friends at Valcour Records have just released The Best of Valcour Records Volume One. It is mind-boggling that in only five years, Joel Savoy, Lucius Fontenot, and Phillip LaFargue have created not only the finest label recording Louisiana artists, but a label that these musicians actually aspire to record for. The Best of Valcour Records Volume One is a collection from their varied stable of artist, from the Pine Leaf Boys to Cedric Watson. There are toe-tapping cuts by Courtbouilion, Corey Ledet, Bonsoir Catin, Red Stick Ramblers, Feufollet, Joel Savoy and Linzay Young, and also The Cajun Country Revival.
In short, this CD is a breathtaking collection of the bands that Acadiana locals go dance to every weekend – though it is not a collection of your Grandfather’s Cajun songs. It is a wonderful CD. I don’t envy the undertaking, selecting which song’s made Volume One of the greatest hits – I trust the remarkable trio is already working on Volume Two.
One of our partners in crime, shaking up the establishment and sticking it to the man, is the Louisiana French Rock (Rock Francais Louisianais) band Isle Derniere. These are the guys that dared to bring Go- Go dancers to their performance at Festival Acadiens last year. They are also the band that did a Cajun French version of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man on our En Francais CD.
I know many powerful and influential members of the Louisiana French Rock scene (a scene which totals about five members). I recently got in the mail a surprise package from Rocky McKeon, who is the Head Guru, High Priest and lead singer for Isle Derniere. In it was a pre-release mix of their upcoming CD, and a stylish, yet rebellious black T-shirt plastered with an extra-large logo of the band.
Provide me a nice T-shirt and I’ll be your biggest devotee – I really do work that cheap. Free T-shirts and sandals are important elements of my personal fashion statement.
Anyhow, if you see me walking around with my head slanted to one side or the other due to a seriously debilitating crick in my neck, you can blame Rocky. I’ve been head banging to his Cajun French fueled Metal for several weeks now.
I’d stay off of the highways around Arnaudville – Air drumming to this rocking CD has me swerving off the road quite a bit as of late.
A few weeks ago, Annie Flanagan of St James Cheese in New Orleans had a pretty good idea for a fundraiser – get some local breweries to donate some of their beers, which would be paired with several courses of cheese donated by St. James, sell tickets and donate one hundred percent of the proceeds to charity. And you know what, it was a huge success! All the money raised from the sold out evening was donated to New Incentives, an organization raising money to help young orphans and vulnerable children. With their partner COPE (Care of Nigeria’s Poor), the money raised that night will allow 92 children to be enrolled and continue to attend school, have regular visits to the doctor, eat a nourishing diet, get their birth certificates and receive vocational training. As always the folks at St. James Cheese were incredible and passionate with everything they did and everyone attending the event was awesome. For more information or to help out, check out www.newincentives.org.
Our good friend and gifted journalist Christian DeBenedetti, has an impressive new book out, The Great American Ale Trail – The Craft Beer Lover’s Guide to the Best Watering Holes in the Nation. Great American Ale Trail is an essential and tremendously informative travel guide for beer aficionados, thus I’m sure Chris reveled in every minute of his ale and lager-imbibing research. In the book Chris says that there is a genuine revolution happening in America when it comes to beer, and he spent a full year traveling around America documenting it. I just got a copy and quickly flipped to page 307- there it was, a full page and a half devoted to Bayou Teche Brewing Company.
Oh, yeah there’s about 400 or so other breweries, and some really cool beer hangouts and bars included in the book too. I’ve got my copy packed in my suitcase – ready for referring to on my next road trip. And check out Chris’ fresh new website – www.weeklypint.com.
OK, not to name drop, but we got to hang out for almost two days with the Beer Chicks. Their first book, The Naked Pint is fantastically informative, humorously written and sold a butt-load of copies. Hallie Beaune and Christina Perozzi also have a splendid Facebook page and killer website, and novel TV special coming up on the Cooking Channel. They know and love everything beer – and they can out-drink any self-respecting Cajun.
Plus they are super-model hot.
I know, every man’s dream girl, right.
Their new and innovative TV special is named Eat This, Drink That. The first of what I’m sure will be countless episodes (and no doubt an Emmy award or two) premiers on the Cooking Channel – March 4th, at 8 pm. The Cooking channel website says a lot of well-deserved nice things about our good friends and their show. The one hour special takes the Beer Chicks on the road where they meet individuals creating new rules for pairing food with drink. One of the Chicks’ stop is at my favorite South Louisiana brewery where they “explore unexpected concoctions with passion fruit and coffee.”
It was a lot of fun filming the show and hanging out with the Chicks. My family and I got to introduce them to our beers, as well as Boudin, Beignets, and a giant Cajun brunch. Watch the show, though the way these thing usually go for me, you’ll probably only get a glimpse of the back of my very unattractive head.
And really, who wants a glimpse of the back of my head messing up their view of the Beer Chicks anyway?
Shameless Beer Dinners alert – Mes Frères et moi are invited to three extraordinary beer dinners in the next few weeks. We have been in training, stretching out our stomachs while simultaneously abusing our livers in anticipation of abuse and punishment these organs will have to soon endure. The first beer dinner will be at Sal and Mookie’s New York Pizza and Ice Cream Joint on Lundi Gras (February 20th) in Jackson Mississippi at seven PM. Check out our Facebook page for the awesome gourmet menu! A few weeks later, on March 5th in downtown Jackson Mississippi -the legendary and renowned Parlor Market will be laying on a full-four course dinner, pairing one of our beers with each of the amazing courses. Finally, on March 17 we will be finishing this Food and Beer Triathlon at a St. Patrick’s Day Beer Brunch at Jolie’s Bistro in Lafayette. We will be putting the menu for that event on the Facebook page soon – they are going to be doing some amazing cocktails with our beers.

Before Lent

Stephanie and I had been working all morning inseparate rooms in our house. She was cloistered upstairs in our office toiling on some year-end reportsgoing to the numerous officials in the states we are distributed in. I was downstairs answering the one hundred and seven emails I had let pile up during the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
Everyone’s been busier than the proverbial one legged man in a butt-kicking contest at our petite farmhouse brewery. Along with our friends at Valcour records, my family just released our first seasonal/collaboration project. Our side of the collaboration was of course a beer - one that we have christened Courir de Mardi Gras. Courir is crafted in the style of a Biere de Mars, a centuries old style of French farmhouse ale.In France this style of beers is brewed in pretty-small batches on farms, thus insuring that not many of them are imported to the states. While we brewed multiple small batches of the beer to refine the recipe, designed the packaging, and labored to get everything approved by the Feds and States we distribute to, the guys at Valcour were busy working on the companion cd, the Best of Valcour Records, Volume I. It was a lot of work, getting the CD and Biere out before Mardi Gras, but I think everyone’s gonna dig it -the CD and the beer are both a lot of fun, and tastefully perfect for Mardi Gras get-togethers.
Just before Christmas we also released the last of our LA-31 series of beers. At New Orleans’ famous Rock and Bowl we helped put on a fantastic evening to raise money with (and for) our good friends at Louisiana Folk roots – they do so much in the preservation and promotion of our Cajun culture. At that party (fabulous music guests Corey Ledet and the Lost Bayou Ramblers) we released our newest beer - Mello Dubbel. In collaboration with Mello Joy Coffee we are crafting a Belgian Dubbel style beer that is spiked with their signature, dark French-roasted, and very Cajun coffee.
Umm, not to brag, but both beers are pretty freaking good.
We’ve also been working on the new brewery; currently framing in and sheet rocking the tasting room and production offices, and also a lab. We are likewise are doing all of the planning and wiring and plumbing to get ready for the brewery equipment coming later this year.
And working on some other, top-secret beer projects. Arnaudville is fast becoming the Area 51 of beer.
So, Stephanie and I had been laboring all morning, separated like we each were in solitary. If we absolutely had to communicate, it was by shouting at each other up and down the stairwell.
We had not shouted a kind word to each other all morning.
Dorsey was on the road working with our distributor in Biloxi for the Top of the Hops festival coming up on the 28th of February. Byron was draping theneck hangers on bottles of our Courir de Mardi Gras beer. These hangers allow for the free download of two songs from the Valcour website. Cory had been working away on some new packaging changes for some of our core brands, plus starting work on the next – way too cool, and top-secret seasonal.
Stephanie and I had skipped breakfast – opting for a couple of tall mugs of Dark Roast Mello Joy coffee. Nearing noon, my beer belly started to announce that it was empty – but I still had about seventy emails to answer – and new ones coming in.
“Damn, I’m hungry,” I said out loud.
Stephanie still clicked away at the computerupstairs
I shoved enough of the piles of papers and old mail, samples of barley and marketing products, and the accumulated reminders of everything we had to get caught up on that covered our kitchen table aside -just enough room for two place settings.
Then I went into our ice box.
I emerged with a couple of Honey Crisp apples (worth all of the hype), and a too-large stick of home-made venison sausage. I sliced both, and then washed some bon-bon sweet grape tomatoes dressed with nothing but a little sea salt, and set them on a very nice platter of mixedolives, Brie cheese,and some very nice crackers. Even with the backdrop of unfinished work, the platters piled high with food started to calm me and my increasingly impatient stomach.
I called up to my overworked and severely underpaid partner – it was past time for her to take a little break. While I waited for her to get to a stopping point, I pulled out two bottles of Courir de Mardi Gras beer from the back of the fridge, and poured them into a couple of fancy-pants Belgian beer glasses.
Being a French style of beer, of course it appreciated being on the same table with the casually arranged platters of food. When working out the recipe, I did not foresee how well this francophone ale would pair with all of the disparate flavors of a cobbled together lunch - not only did it pair with each unique food, it united them. I was in foodie heaven, wearing a little black beret and stereotypically laughing like one of the French cartoon characters in Ratatouille.
Freshly sliced straight from the garden tomato is tough to pair with many beers, near impossible with wine – but the Biere de Mars laughed at the tomato pairing throw-down. I’m bummed that this beer is only going to be available until Lent – just before we start harvesting the really great tasting tomatoes from our little springgarden.
Stephanie and I enjoyed our respite – we mocked the ever-increasing size of our inboxes while eating and drinking leisurely. I tried to convince her that a second Courir de Mardi Gras Biere would maximize our afternoon’s efficiency.
She didn’t buy that, but she didn’t argue too much either.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Well I woke up Sunday morning

With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.

And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,

So I had one more for dessert.

The opening lyrics of Sunday Morning Coming Down by Kris Kristofferson (though I think I’ve only heard the Johnny Cash version of the song) pretty much sums up how many brewers start our Sabbath morning. Saturday nights are usually pretty busy for us, meeting the folks interested in our crafted beers at beer festivals and dinners, hanging out at the bars and nightclubs that have our beer– and of course it would be rude not to throw back a few pints with fellow beer enthusiasts.

Also the occasional night cap when you finally make it home.

A Sunday morning hangover is a common, work-related injury of the brewing profession. I guess it is something we all learn to not only live with, but develop our own cures for.

I don’t so much have a cure, but I do have my own Sunday morning hangover routine. I wake up pretty early and quietly trudge downstairs, dragging my bare feet to our still dark kitchen. On our breakfast table there is a tiny little AM/FM clock radio that I tune to KRVS 88.7, the public radio station in Lafayette. On Sunday mornings from seven to nine is one of my favorite radio shows – Le Reviel hosted by Louis Michot. Louis is also the violin player and vocalist for the Lost Bayou Ramblers and always plays a great collection of traditional Cajun songs. He also broadcasts the entire show in Cajun French.

If we could get every radio station in Acadiana to carry his Sunday morning show – I would not have to hang-over fumble with the tiny dial on our kitchen radio.

Feeling a little more like myself thanks to the radio’s toe-tapping two steps, I pull out my large, very well seasoned, cast iron Dutch oven and start a batch of couche-couche. It takes all of about thirty minutes to get a batch just right, so about 20 minutes into it I’ll plug in my old General Electric percolator – filled with either Mello Joy dark roast (the strength depending how hung-over a state I am in). The sounds of coffee perking, and the aromas of the frying cornmeal and coffee, along with Cajun French music coming from our little radio takes me back forty years to pre-dawn summers in Grandma and Papa’s little kitchen.

To a time well before I could legally drink beer.

By now my little girl and wife have usually made it downstairs. Sipping from big cups of Café au Laits, my wife and I rush to get the hot bowls of couche-couche to the table. My wife always pours Steen’s syrup on hers, while I prefer two sprinkled on tablespoons of very refined table sugar. All three of us look forward to that magical moment when the couche-couche is sweet and hot and the milk ice cold, and rushing we each swallow the first several spoonfuls because we know soon everything will be tepid and mushy in our bowls.

Those first spoonfuls are Heaven though.

Speaking of Heaven, we have to finish our Sunday breakfast before nine thirty, because Father Brown’s Mass is at ten thirty. Catholics cannot consume anything an hour before Mass (though I think when I was a kid the fast started the night before). Father Brown also has Mass at seven and eight, but I don’t think these times were devised for worshipers who consumed too many pints of craft beer the night before.

Father Brown’s the best and he always gives us enough to ponder on for the next six days – and he also enjoys craft beer and is a great supporter and friend of our little brewery.

His Mass always prepares us for the hard work of the week ahead – and by the time it ends the occupational hangover has pretty much been cured. Our theme song is a little less depressing Sunday Morning Coming Down and something a little more upbeat.

Maybe ZZ Top’s Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers.

Bayou Teche Beers are now available in much of Mississippi, and we look forward to meeting more of our supporters and beer fans there. Great things are happening in the Deep South when it comes to craft beer and I want to give ya’ll a big Merci Bien for helping us be a part of it.

Karlos, Byron, Dorsey, Can't Dance...

Back when my father was a young man, rural folks in Acadiana still held bals de maison, or house dances. The men would push the furniture to the walls and sweep the floors, while the women cooked a big gumbo and also some sweet dough pies. Since there were not any dance clubs within driving distance, these rural Cajuns would gather weekly and dance at their neighbor’s homes – until eventually it was their own turn to host one at home. At these house dances there were always dance contests – one for the best two-step, and one the best waltz.

I suspect my dad did not win any of those contests.

My dad tells us that later, when salles de dance (dance halls) started opening in rural St. Martin parish, there were still dance contests, though the halls added Jitterbug, Polka and Charleston categories to the competitions.

For over two centuries the Arnaudville Knotts have been cursed with an unexplainable inability to dance. Oh we love to two step and waltz – we just do not look good doing it. Two left feet does not describe it, unless they were Frankenstein’s feet. My grandfather was a bad dancer, as was his father. My father is pretty bad, as are my brothers. As for me, when I dance I look like the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, if he was cursed with arthritis and a strange lack of rhythm.

And Frankenstein’s feet.

And curiously we all married women who love to and are fantastic dancers. I am sure my mom won some of those dance contests back in the day (surely before she met dad). I am sure my grandmother did too, she was also a fantastic dancer. My brothers’ wives, as well as my own could, if they were not handicapped by Knotts as partners.

When my brothers and I are sitting around the brewery, talking about those events in our Cajun culture that bisected with drinking beer, one thing that kept coming up (other than Bourée tournaments, trail rides and crawfish boils) was those old-time, Cajun-music driven dances.

So Byron and I did not think it odd when Dorsey and Laurin suggested we sponsor a LA-31 dance off. Keeping alive old Cajun and Creole traditions while enjoying crafted beers is like a Blues Brothers, “we’re on a mission from God” calling for us. Plus no one could accuse us of putting on a dance competition because we wanted to win any of the prizes for ourselves - it is beyond belief that our dancing abilities would allow that.

So put on your dancing shoes (or cowboy boots) and come out and see us this Sunday, February 27th at Whiskey River Landing on the Henderson Levee for the first LA-31 Dance off, presented by Schilling Distributing. We are kicking off at 4 pm with Jamie Bergeron and the Kicking Cajuns. The dance off will have three rounds, ending in a final elimination round to crown the overall best dancing couple.

I hear the prizes are very nice – and will include beaucoup LA-31 biere. While you are there look for my wife on the dance floor – her partner will be dancing like he has on Frankenstein’s boots.

Pappa Was Not a Rolling Stone

Pappa was one of the last holdouts.

Every New Year’s Day we would all get together at my grandfather’s home in Bayou Portage. Like all of his French-speaking neighbors, our grandparents would slowly simmer a big pot of black-eyed peas promising next year’s good luck. There also was one of smothered cabbage, guaranteed to bring us money, also on Grandma’s kitchen table.

What separated us from most of the other families getting together that day was that we had presents for one another!

Pappa made sure of that. It was a tradition he wanted continued.

Funny, people of his parents’ generation would not have thought those presents odd at all. New Years day was planned around a large midday meal (called diner in those days), with the accompanying black eyed peas and cabbage, and multiple dessert dishes and demitasses of café noir. After the extended meal and multiple exchanges of “Bonne Année” presents were exchanged among the members of most Cajun families.

I just googled “Cajuns exchanging New Years’ Gifts” and the couple of hits I got suggest this Cajun tradition was one that was brought over from rural France, and was practiced there since Roman times.

Pappa did not like the way most of his neighbors (and his own grandchildren) were forgetting this old custom. To him, we were adopting the ways of Les Americans (what he called English speakers, a term almost as insulting as Yankees). You see, we were getting presents on Christmas – and to the older folks that practice was sacrilegious on one of the two most holy days of the year.

On Christmas, past generations in Acadiana would stay up for Midnight Mass, and then prepare for a thoughtful day celebrating our Saviors’ birth– and a very large midday meal in his honor.

By the way, this year in Arnaudville, Father Brown’s Christmas Mass rocked. He’s the best.

The last fifteen or so years my father has renewed the New Years’ custom his father so stubbornly held on to. My wife and I still exchange presents on Christmas – we do have a son and daughter who would move out if we did not. And they look forward to New Years at my Mom and Dad’s house (and a second round of gifts for them), continuing a Cajun tradition that goes back centuries.

We would like to thank everyone who has helped us start up the brewery this year – all of our family, friends, the supporters we have met during our travels around Louisiana, the retailers, bar and restaurant owners who continue to believe in us, folks at all of the distributors, the three people who read my blogs, and everyone who has stopped by the brewery to say hello. We appreciate all of the help more than we could ever express. And for those lucky enough to try one of the few cases of our most outlandish beer yet (a test batch of a very high alcohol Christmas seasonal ale, squeezed out of a single oak barrel and spiked with a very secret, and in many States, illegal ingredient), don’t worry, it will be available next year in larger quantities.

If I get my Christmas wish and the fine folks at the Federal Offices of the TTB approve the formula in time.

My brothers and I, our wives and family would like to wish everyone in the Bayou Teche Brewing community a Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année.

On the Importance of Taking a Nap

The morning sun never caught my grandfather in bed. Getting up while the roosters still snored, and also before the heat of the day, he would eat breakfast while watching Passe Partout. When we stayed with him and Grandma my brothers and I joked that they got up before anyone spoke English – in those days Passe Partout was broadcast entirely in Cajun French, as was my grandparent’s conversation around their kitchen table.

My grandfather would head out to his farm, working until dinner time. Dinner was served at noon, and it was the big meal of the day. Grandma would have two or three home-grown vegetable dishes ready, plenty of rice and gravy, maybe a roast, or a baked chicken and if my brothers and I had been good all morning there were mounds of French fries and a pitcher of homemade Zatarans root beer on the table for us.

I don’t know when we started calling the noontime meal in Acadiana lunch. I guess lunch is what you eat when you live by a clock, “we have one hour to grab lunch.” Dinner at my grandparent’s house was an event, often with visitors, boisterous laughter and long conversations, with no one looking at their wrist watch to see how much time was left till work started again. Coffee was served after dinner and as the conversations wound down, my grandfather would always head off for his nap.

He was not alone in his daily nap routine; all of the old Cajun men we knew would head off after a hard morning’s work for one. They always woke up to start the afternoon like it was a brand new day.

It had been a long time since I took a nap.

All of us have been very busy at the brewery. Byron, Cory and I are brewing up batches of our smoked beer, Boucanee. After each batch is ready there is also the kegging of the fresh beer and cleaning the fermenters and tanks, and then delivering of the filled kegs to our distributors across the state.

All of the work is done by hand and there is no air conditioning in the work areas of our little brewery.

Every weekend and many weeknights there are beer dinners, festivals, tastings and sales meetings with our distributors for Dorsey and Laurin to attend. If we are double (or triple) booked, then my wife and I, or Byron and Cory would head out after brewing.

We are loving every minute of it. We have met and made so many new friends, and enjoyed visiting with people passionate about craft beer, and about our Cajun and Creole heritage.

But a nap would be good.

Over the three day labor day weekend my wife and I, and our little daughter (with SpongeBob boogie board, SpongeBob beach towel, SpongeBob videos, SpongeBob fruit snacks, SpongeBob toothbrush, and toothpaste, and assorted SpongeBob products) loaded up in my wife’s little car and headed west to a condo on Galveston beach. We turned off our cell phones and did not bring anything that would remind us of the work piling up at our little brewery. LA-31 T-shirts and Koozies not allowed.

We did not even bring any LA-31 to drink. Three days without my favorite beer would be a difficult cross for me to bear. (The editor is not taking this well and is thinking about deleting the last two sentences…oh, last four sentences.)

We built a few sandcastles with our little girl and watched as the waves slowly eroded her fortresses. We then jumped in those waves laughing with our little girl as she tasted the water of the Gulf for the first time. Playing in the condo’s swimming pool is how we spent our afternoons and our daughter enjoyed soaking in the hot tubs in the evening; I’m sure she’ll want one for Christmas.

The second day there I got a nap, got another one on the third day, nice. The old Cajuns we knew growing up were right about a lot of things – the importance of the daily nap was one of them.

We are now back to work at the brewery, and though we cannot always squeeze in a daily nap, I caught Byron napping under a mulberry tree and our son Cory sleeping on the tasting porch after our two beer lunch yesterday.

Our grandfather would be proud.

Thanks to Erica for use of the condo and access to her fully stocked pantry. I especially appreciated the six packs of St. Arnolds and New Belgium beers she got for me – those beers made the two afternoon naps even more pleasurable.

In the Garden

My little girl and I worked all morning in our little vegetable plot
today. We harvested some Creole tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow squash
and zucchini, several bell peppers, and thyme and basil leaves.
When we were kids, our grandfather always tended a
large vegetable garden, and I kind of want to pass that tradition on.
Though it is a lot of work, my little girl is still small enough not
to notice that it is.

We still had a lot of food in the ice-box left-over from yesterday’s
Independence Day barbecue – mainly a lot of grilled meat.
Several species had a place on that July 4th grill, but the focus was
on the traditional hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken wings.
We also put some fresh pork sausage in our smokehouse,
smoking the links with the same cherry wood that we use to
flavor our Boucanee beer.

Man we drank a lot of beer yesterday for America’s birthday.

My daughter and I went back into the house with our freshly
harvested bounty. We washed and put away the vegetables,
taking the time to sample a few cherry tomatoes. Our niece
was visiting from Arizona, so we visited with her and
her toddler son. In South Louisiana, our conversations always
end up being about the next meal. We had plenty of left-over
barbecue beans, potato salad, Cole slaw and leftover barbecued
meats, but we decided on doing something with the vegetables
my daughter and I had just brought in.

While my wife boiled some angel hair pasta, I put some fresh basil,
olive oil, parmesan cheese and pine nuts in the food processer.
Seasoning with some salt and freshly ground black pepper, I then
pressed the pulse button several times making pesto sauce
for the pasta.

We often make fresh pesto – you can put some on top of
Cajun-seasoned, broiled catfish filets a few minutes before
you take them out of the oven. Sometimes I’ll mix them with
egg yolks for deviled eggs, or boiled potatoes and fresh
green onions for a pesto potato salad.

I poured an LA-31 for my niece – she lives in Arizona and
our beers are not available out of state yet. I then
sliced up the yellow squash and zucchini, tossed them with
some of the fresh thyme we picked, olive oil and salt and pepper.
I sautéed them on the grill outside for just long enough for
them to pick up some of that smoky goodness you can only get
from outdoor cooking. We also sliced up some of those fresh
Creole tomatoes and cucumbers.

You know, everywhere around Acadiana there are specialty
meat shops selling stuffed anything you can think of, multiple
meat sausages, tasso, turduckhens – you name it. Growing up I
remember holiday meals with many meats on the table – beef roast,
several chickens in a fricassee and smothered pork chops on the
side would be a typical holiday meal. We all fall into the trap
of thinking Cajun food is about meat and seafood, but we forget
about our tradition of delicious vegetable sides.

That same holiday table would have maque choux, smothered
cabbage with andouille, hot from the oven, and still in
their skins sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas and smoked sausage,
petite pois with onions and tasso, lima beans,
field peas with snap beans, and smothered potatoes.

Our grandfather had an acre set aside
for his vegetable plot, and he grew everything he needed there
for our grandmother’s signature vegetable dishes.
Though we often think of our area’s specialty meats, our
cuisine has some of the best vegetable dishes in America.

Like beans and rice.

So we opened a twelve pack worth of LA-31s, and served
ourselves heaping plates of pesto with shredded parmesan
(yeah, yeah I know that pesto is not a Cajun vegetable dish),
sautéed squash, and salted tomatoes and cucumbers.
We ate so much, and though we had no room for dessert,
we forced down some Blue Bell pecan praline ice cream.

Tomorrow it will be hard to get back to working at
the brewery; this has been one long and relaxing holiday weekend.

Happy birthday America.

The Beer In Me :: Forums

From Andy Dugas of the Beer in Me:
Click here to read Forum Post at the the Beer in Me.

Bayou Teche Brewing is releasing LA-31 Boucanee, a lightly smoked wheat beer.

This news is from Karlos Knott of Bayou Teche Brewing.

Karlos tells me that their Biere Pale is selling very well in all parts of South Louisiana. The demand for Biere Pale is very high and they are selling out every month in every market.

Currently, it is my (Andy) favorite beer and is available in the New Orleans area.

Now Bayou Teche is releasing a new beer, LA-31 Boucanee. It is currently their favorite beer at the brewery and he describes it as a lightly smoked wheat beer, very refreshing and goes with anything grilled, smoked, or a meat that loves being smoked (pork or chicken). They also drink it with gumbo, boudin, sausage po-boys and grilled hamburger.

LA-31 Boucanee will be available for a tasting one night this week at the Avenue Pub in New Orleans in a cask. They will begin offering it on tap in about 3 weeks.

Karlos shared the tap handle artwork for the Boucanee with me. (Picture is to the right)

Thanks for the information Karlos, I can’t wait to try out LA-31 Boucanee!

Our Bayou Teche

Our niece and some of her friends from school were riding my brother’s four-wheeler a few weeks ago. The girls are way too young to know who Evel Knievel is, but they were riding that four-wheeler like they were possessed by his ghost, looking for something to jump.

Since we do not live near the Snake River Canyon, the Bayou Teche would have to do.

Scooting up and down the banks behind the brewery, they came a little closer to the bayou’s water each time – and eventually, like Mr. Knievel on his ill-fated canyon jump, they too did not make it across.

The budding daredevils swam back to shore. My brother’s four-wheeler flipped tire side up and bobbed with the current down the Teche.

At the brewery, we have just unveiled our LA-31 pirogue. Custom painted, we commissioned and are donating it to raise money for the first ever Tour du Teche canoe race. The Tour du Teche is a 130 mile adventure-canoe race set for September 17-19th of this year. The race’s organizers will raffle off the pirogue to help raise the grand prize money for the first team to make it from Port Barre to Berwick.

The floating, upside-down four-wheeler could make it there first.

The pirogue we are donating is the two-man Cottonmouth made by Ron Chapman Shipwright Inc. Their piroques are hand-crafted in Louisiana and at 13 foot, 6 inches, this one is designed to carry two men, their guns, decoys and dog.

And several six packs of LA-31 beer.

Our Grandfather hand-built many cypress pirogues for my brothers and me as we were growing up. We spent much of our youth fishing from one on the numerous waterways around his Bayou Portage home. We did not have a four wheeler growing up, so all of our daredevil stunts were performed from a very slow moving pirogue.

Till we got drivers licenses.

The drawing for the pirogue will be held at The Coffee Break, in Breaux Bridge on September 1st. Tickets are $1 each. They are available at a growing list of locations. Please buy some raffle tickets to help make the Tour du Teche a success. We have some at the brewery.

One of the benefits of the race is the renewed interest in cleaning up the Bayou Teche. Volunteers from Blake Couvillion’s clean-up organization, Cajuns for Bayou Teche, and workers from the Parish and City governments along the bayou are helping to return the Teche to a pristine condition and make it the recreational and cultural showplace of South Louisiana. You’ll find information on Blake Couvillion’s army of clean-up volunteers and information on the Tour du Teche canoe race at www.techeproject.com.

Thankfully, the Bayou Teche looks a little better now that a budding daredevil’s errant four-wheeler has been fished out six miles down the bayou from the brewery.

Holy Smoke

I recently got a call from a good friend of mine from Eunice.
He suggested we meet in Opelousas – the halfway point between our
little Arnaudville brewery and his homestead’s smokehouse.
He just emptied his smokehouse of several chaudins (stuffed pig
stomachs) and was looking to trade one, along with some freshly
smoked homemade sausages. We have a family crawfish pond, and
I figured he wanted a couple of sacks of live ones in barter.

In South Louisiana, sacks of crawfish are legal tender – heck,
they're more important to our economy than the gold standard.
Everything’s value can be measured in sacks of crawfish,
so imagine my surprise when he turned down the two sacks,
suggesting a couple of six packs of LA-31 for the trade instead
– and this with crawfish prices hovering around two dollars a
pound just prior to Good Friday.

I drove up to Opelousas and made the trade, visiting my old buddy
for a while. Driving home, thinking of devouring that stuffed
pig’s stomach, I amused myself, “LA-31’s value on the currencies
market was going up!”

That night my mother smothered the chaudin with a bunch of
chopped onions – man what a nice brown gravy it made.
Nearby was a rice cooker with what looked like too much rice
and a pot of white beans and also a giant platter of cucumbers.
We all ate like it was Thanksgiving - that very rich and smoky
chaudin was the best I ever remember eating. Those produced
in our part of Acadiana are usually fresh, however this one
(like most made in the area of Acadiana from Eunice to
Ville Platte), was smoked.

Don’t tell my good friend Justin that I will gladly give him three
six packs for another chaudin. Crawfish prices however, are headed
south thanks to Lent’s end.

Our little brewery had a ribbon cutting ceremony last week, and we
treated the assembled guests and dignitaries to a surprise keg of our
second beer – Boucanèe. Like the chaudins from the Cajuns neighbors
just north us, this beer is smoked. My brothers
and I figured a few of our guests would be sampling one or two from
the keg, leaving plenty for us for the weekend.

Unfortunately for our weekend plans, that keg of Boucanèe did not
make it thru the ribbon cutting.

Everyone there drank several pints of our cherry-wood smoked wheat
beer. Russell’s, our local grocery store prepared for us a large
platter of delicious finger sandwiches and rushing, I put together
some pinchos, which are small, two or three ingredient appetizers
that are served on tiny wooden spears in the bars of the Basque
region of Spain. Our colorful platter had salami, olives,
mozzarella balls, roasted red pepper strips, pickled
okra, old fashioned ham, shrimp, Fontina cheese, dried
mission figs, and marinated artichoke hearts pared in several
interesting combinations. The smoky Boucanèe beer complemented
everything it was paired with.

Our Priest, Father Brown started the day out by blessing our little
brewery, and we enjoyed the visit from so many of our friends,
family and early supporters – and we all clearly enjoyed the good
food and beer. We were reminded about the things that
are really important in Acadiana.

And we learned that a stuffed pig’s stomach and a wheat beer both
taste better when they have been smoked.

Reviews are In (indulge me)...

LA-31 BIÈRE PÂLE was recently given terrific reviews by two of the world’s most respected beer experts in the April issue of All About Beer magazine. The editors of the magazine noted that LA-31 is crafted to compliment our traditional Louisiana cuisine like jambalaya, sauce piquant, shrimp Creole, chicken and sausage gumbo, fried seafood platters, crawfish bisque and ettouffe. Brewing a beer that pairs with Cajun and Creole cuisine was our little brewery’s original intent.

In his review for the article, Garrett Oliver, who is an internationally recognized expert on beer, brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery and author of The Brewmaster’s Table observed: “This beer has an attractive orange-amber color underneath a tight, off-white foam. The aroma is earth, nutty, and musty, with mild notes of fruit and mint. The bitterness stands up front on the palate, broad and brash, before the full-bodied malts pull the beer back into balance. Hop bitterness lingers after a long finish.”

Roger Protz, a highly respected beer authority and author of The Complete Guide to World Beer and 300 Beers to Try Before You Die wrote that LA-31 is “A pale gold beer with a big fluffy collar of foam, it has a nutty and fruity nose with hints of caramel, butterscotch and spicy hops. Intensely bitter hops burst on the tongue, along with tart orange/citrus fruit and sweet malt. The well-balanced finish has creamy malt, tangy fruit, a continuing hint of butterscotch and bitter hops resins. This is a quenching and complex beer - I wish it were available in curry-mad Britain as it would be the perfect companion for spicy Indian and Bangladeshi dishes.”

I am excited that a BAYOU TECHE BIÈRE was reviewed by such a renowned national magazine. Our petite brewery that only sells beer in Southern Louisiana appeared in a Belgian newspaper and now we have been favorably reviewed by an English writer and New York based brewmaster who are respected authorities on beer. I read Oliver’s The Brewmasters Table once a month and everything that Roger Protz wrote while my family and I were planning our Arnaudville brewery. When I was not brewing or drinking beer, I was reading about brewing or drinking beer. I am grateful that our first beer has been recognized by two beer experts whose writings have inspired me to open Bayou Teche Brewing.

Six more weeks of this??

A few weeks back, my little girl ran and jumped in the middle of our bed very early in the morning. She said it was too cold in her room to stay alone in bed.

It had been well below freezing in South Louisiana for a whole week, and that does not happen very often.

I got up and plodded down the stairs to crank up the heater. I also put on a pot of coffee. My wife and daughter were still asleep – I on the other hand had not had a good night.

The thought of cooking and eating beignets had kept me awake much of the night.

My wife and I had taken our daughter to watch the just released Disney movie, “The Princess and the Frog.” It was a funny movie, classic Disney. It was set in and around New Orleans and there were many, many references to Creole and Cajun foods, customs, music. Unfortunately for me, one dish in the cartoon that was served up several times was beignets.

The downstairs was starting to warm up and the smell of the chicory in the coffee was filling the air. I mixed up a batch of beignet dough and fired up our deep fat fryer. Working quietly, I fried up two dozen of them. I also scalded some milk for café au lait. About the time my wife and daughter made it downstairs, almost everything was ready. My little girl is always in charge of shaking on the powdered sugar, which she sprinkles on so heavily that the each beignet looked the snows of Kilimanjaro.

I could eat Beignets every morning for breakfast and then again for brunch. Pour me a bottomless cup of café au lait, and I could eat them all day long. I am the same way with Gumbo - I am destined to serve myself three bowls. And the next day, after it spends a night in the ice box, maybe even four.

Ever had that peanut butter in the chocolate moment – the revelation of two great tastes that taste great together. Beignets and café au lait are like that. Locals and tourist have enjoyed that perfect food and beverage pairing in New Orleans for 200 years. Pizza and draft beer are like that also – once you start eating and drinking you cannot stop. If you don’t believe me, go to Deano’s, Alesi’s or Pizzaville and order a large pepperoni and a pitcher of draft beer. You will finish both, even if you have to loosen your belt and run around the building a couple of times between the last few slices.

Gumbo and craft beer are like that. You cannot help yourself, if you pair a well crafted beer with your next cold weather gumbo, you will return to the gumbo pot (and to your ice box) at least two more times. I recommend a good American Pale Ale, or an American version of an India Pale Ale. If you must have a lager, try the Pilsner Urquell – especially with a seafood gumbo. The zip from the hops in that beer are refreshing and really cleanses the palate between the spoonfuls of roux, seafood and seasonings.

Of course you could try an LA-31 with your gumbo. It is still cold enough, light a fire under your gumbo pot.

Gumbo, pizza, I guess now we should be working on a beer that will enhance and pair with beignets - perhaps a Biere au lait?

Who Dat?

The Saints will be playing in the Super bowl next Sunday! A week later is Valentine’s Day, and the Tuesday after that is Mardi Gras. Crawfish season is really kicking off after the recent unexpected frigid weather. Dorsey caught enough in our pond for our first big boil of the year last night.

Is it a good time to live in Acadiana or what?

I am smothering some fresh pork sausage right now and the house smells like Grandma’s used to. Nobody could smother sausage (or anything else) as well as she could. I am looking forward to putting that rich sauce rouillè over a steaming plate of rice, sliding a link of smothered sausage on the side. I don’t know why, but white beans always seemed to be the vegetable she would serve with smothered sausage, so I am fixing a batch of those as well.

I am also drinking an LA-31 Bière Pâle out of the bottle.

Yep, our bottled LA-31 has finally hit store shelves around Acadiana. I had been stalking our area distributor’s salesman for days, and finally he had some cases of our beer in his truck. He set his first display up at Russell’s, a grocery around the corner from our brewery. I took some pictures of him working and later of our first paying customer.

Felt like we already won the Superbowl!

The brewery’s phone has not stopped ringing. Thanks to everyone who bought the beer and called to inform us of what Cajun food they paired it with. We have had beaucoup recommendations for dishes that our beer has complimented.

It was pretty damn good with the boiled crawfish last night.

Our local distributor ordered a two month supply of our beer - which lasted them only two days. Cajuns sure do like to drink beer. We are brewing up some more, but for now there are only a few cases left in stores. I am sure they will all be gone before lent starts.

One lady who called the brewery let us know that she had bought a case to pair with a large turtle sauce piquant she had prepared for a party she was throwing. Though we did not get an invite (and we love turtle sauce piquant) she did call back and say our beer was delicious - as was her sauce piquant. But the two together was to her a revelation - Crafted beer is the only beverage to serve with the Cajun food we long to eat.

I am looking forward to diving into that smothered sausage tonight – it is one of my all-time favorite Cajun meals. I know we will drive to Henderson for raw oysters and fried seafood platters at Pat’s restaurant on Valentines Day. We will boil some crawfish before the Superbowl, saving some for a celebratory crawfish ettouffe afterward, and I have got to hunt down some olive dressing for muffalettas and a King cake for Mardi Gras.

A big merci beaucoup to everyone who helped, supported and believed in our little brewery. We also want to thank everyone who has tried our beer – keep calling us with the interesting food pairing recommendations.

Is this a good time to live in Acadiana or what?

Thanksgiving

Got up way to early for a holiday morning and put the heavily stuffed with garlic, onion and pork sausage turkey into the oven about four and half hours before our guests were supposed to show up for Thanksgiving. I heavily sprinkled it with Penzy’s Bicentennial Rub – it goes on a bright yellow but I find it roasts to the prettiest brown of any seasoning rub or baste.

The evening before, I baked two pecan pies. One was a large torte with a shortbread crust and topped with honey, the other was a made from scratch pecan cheesecake. Those pies tempted me as I slept that night and well into our strawberry-filled crepe breakfast.

While the turkey was baking and filling the house with its pungent garlic scent, I fixed a tasso and shrimp cornbread stuffing. This is a very easy side dish to prepare. Just mix equal parts cornbread and French bread, add some sautéed onions and celery, fresh jalapeno peppers, chopped cooked shrimp and tasso. Stir in some salt, pepper and cayenne pepper with some chicken stock and bake.

My favorite vegetable side dish is petite pois. Stir a couple of cans into a thick white butter roux; add some pearl onions, julienned andouille sausage, a sprinkle of thyme and salt and black pepper. Our cranberry side was a mold made of fresh cranberries, lemon juice, and fresh rosemary from the garden.

Sounds like a lot of work, but it really was not.

Usually for every holiday we make a commemorative home brewed batch of beer. This year we thought it would be fun to buy a large variety of commercial beers and see which pared with the typically heavy, spicy and rich Cajun Thanksgiving meal.

Mom and Dad showed up with Mom’s famous Macaroni and Cheese, my son and his girlfriend with a large pot of crawfish ettouffe. My youngest brothers’ wife brought a pork roast and a platter of roasted green beans wrapped in bacon.

A few days before, I stocked the beer fridge with Abita Restoration Ale and Jockamo IPA. I also put a six pack of Lazy Magnolia Pecan Ale and a growler of their Gulf Porter in there, as well as Redhook Longhammer IPA, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a La Goudale from France .

My wife’s sister surprised us with many six packs of New Belgium Fat Tire, Blue Paddle, and 3° Below. Also she had 3 very large bottles of Chimay, one each of Chimay Rouge, Chimay Blue, and Chimay Blanche. Having these Trappist monk brewed beers in the house gave me one more thing to be thankful for.

We set the table. Cajun family holiday meals are pretty informal affairs. The food is always set buffet style and everyone serves themselves and watches to see who does not serve themselves at least three plates.

The cooks also competitively watch to find out which dish is hit hardest for seconds and thirds.

This is the unscientific method I used to determine which beer most complemented this holiday meal. First off, I had to remove the Trappist’s Chimays from consideration as I had greedily hid them way in the back of the refrigerator hoping to keep them for drinking after everyone went home. Judging by the empty bottles my wife and I picked up while cleaning, I would have to give the title for the best beer to go with a Cajun Thanksgiving to New Belgium’s Blue Paddle. A close second place would go to Abita’s Restoration Ale.

And surprisingly for some, the Lazy Magnolia Gulf Porter perfectly complemented the pecan pies.

We had so much to be thankful for this year. We have been truly blessed and are looking forward to our Christmas and New Years celebrations.

A big Merci Beaucoup for all y’alls friendship and support of our tiny brewery. We are thankful for that as well.

Bon Temps

Took the weekend off and brought my wife and little girl to the KBON radio listener appreciation party in Rayne this weekend. The weather was short sleeve cool and not a cloud in the sky. There were numerous Cajun and Zydeco bands performing on stage,
fresh gratons popping in grease, and beaucoup Cajun food vendors. One was even serving a rib-eye steak ettouffe.

Did I mention that my wife was volunteering at the beer booth?

It don’t get much better than that.

I arrived early enough to have a brunch of hot gratons and Budweiser beer. They were serving the beer ice cold, in those petite 10oz cans. I worked up quite a thirst jogging back to the beer booth every time I drained one of those little cans.

Man, the cracklins were fried perfectly – cooked all the way thru but not burnt tasting on the outside. They were seasoned with a light sprinkling of salt like the old folks used to do when I was a kid. I do savor cracklins spiced up with a Cajun
or Creole seasoning mix like most stores do these days, but these simple salted ones took me back to my Papa and Grandma’s boucheries.

My daughter and I finished the whole bag of them, wiped our hands on my pants and danced a few waltzes and 2-steps. She’s only four, so I had to hoist and carry her while we cut the rug. I got a good work out - and quite a thirst as well.

She really liked the Pine Leaf Boys. I am pretty sure they were her favorite band. I enjoyed them as well. Those young musicians’ version of the Pine Grove Blues was the high point of our weekend.

We made a quick run to visit my hard at work wife. I am sure she enjoyed all of our visits but to be truthful, I was there for another beer as much as to see her. Anheuser-Busch (I guess it is InBev now) got a bunch of my money that day.

I bought my little girl a paper basket of French fries. While sitting in our folding chairs right next to the bandstand we overheard a lot of French being spoken all around us. I told my little girl that we were experiencing our heritage and culture,
and that these were our people.

And a lot of these people had beer bellies.

Which is not surprising because they were drinking a lot of beer.

I bought myself a couple of KBON t-shirts and a koozie that said “AIEEEEE where’s the ice chest babe?” Man I wish I had come up with that slogan first. It would have looked great on our brewery’s koozies.

After things wound down and we packed up in the car to head home, I thought to myself, yes, this is my culture, and these are my people – beer bellies and all. And I thought about KBON. How many other states have a radio station whose playlist emphasizes
local artists? Not many I bet, we sure are fortunate to have them on the radio dial.

I also thought, “We have got to get the folks who organize the KBON party to let us serve our biere next year.” It is the kind of beer that goes with the foods the vendors were selling, it lubricates the French speaking and 2-stepping muscles and is the
kind of beer our ancestors would have recognized.

And it is the kind of beer that makes the burdens of a beer belly worthwhile.

The Three Beer Lunch

Woke up this morning well before sunrise and sluggishly started a pot of Mello Joy dark roast coffee. Using one rounded tablespoon of grounds for each cup of water I was brewing what we call in South Louisiana café noir.

An extremely strong and very black cup of coffee.

My brother and I were getting ready to drive to Kiln Mississippi to tour the Lazy Magnolia brewery. MapQuest pegged it at a two hour and forty-five minute drive, so we would have to guzzle our café noirs to make our agreed upon departure time.

Cajuns love dark roast coffee - seems that people here have been steadfastly drinking Mello Joy coffee for as long as I can remember. From the time that my grandmother made me my very first childhood café au lait (much more lait then café) it seems that my fondest memories of growing up in Acadaina somehow included remarkably good beverages.

Oh there were a lot of good foods - Christmas Eve gumbos, Good Friday crawfish boils, boucherie boudin and cracklins. But the one constant in all of our family activities were great beverages.

Uncle T-boy would serve an out of this world bay leaf tea brewed with leaves from a tree in his yard. There were the illicit sips of locally distilled moonshine or nips from a flask of Southern Comfort while hunting or undetected sips of beer while fishing with some of our other uncles. Grandma’s homemade root beer (super sweet and made with Zataran’s extract) and lemonade in glass pitchers were always on the table for Sunday dinner, as was café au lait with couche couche in the morning. In the autumn, ice chests were filed with cream soda and red pop for refreshment after baled hay was loaded in Papa’s barn.

After every meal the adults would brew a too – strong greg of café noir. It seemed to us kids that the strong coffee would lubricate some kind of collective French speaking muscle, because the volume at the adults’ table would reach rock concert levels.

Byron and I finished our café noirs and hit I-10 east. Traffic was very light and we made it to Kiln with time to spare even after making two pit stops to relieve ourselves of all that strong black coffee. We met with Leslie Henderson at her brewery. We took an interesting tour and then spent the morning talking with her and Matt McKiernan about our lives in the South, Southern food, hospitality and the state of Southern beers. We suggested food and beer parings to each other – my brother and I were impressed with their passion for crafting great beers. Lazy Magnolia beers have an affinity for the foods of the Gulf coast.

After our visit, Leslie suggested my brother and I travel a mile or so up the road to have lunch at Banty’s restaurant. I ordered a large plate of red beans and rice with sausage and a large slab of cornbread. My brother had a muffaletta so big that if he held it up high enough, the sandwich would totally eclipse the sun. With our meals we each ordered a pint of Lazy Magnolia’s Reb Ale – served in Mason jars (a buddy of mine, also raised in the South said that he drank out of so many Mason jars growing up that his lips were threaded). Byron and I both agreed that it was one of the tastiest beers brewed in the region and I’ll be damned if it did not pare perfectly with our meals. Halfway thru our plates we rested to give our stomachs a break and each ordered a Magnolia Southern Pecan.

Struggling, we finished our too large dinners and the waitress asked if we wanted dessert. We both knew the perfect way to cap off this fine meal – not a café noir like our family did years ago, but a Jefferson Sweet Potato Stout from our favorite Mississippi brewery.

Next time ya’ll go to New Orleans, visit some of the local breweries. Lazy Magnolia is just thirty minutes or so east of I-10, Abita just north of Lake Pontchartrain in Abita springs, Heiner Brau in Covington brews some very authentic German beers, and the guys at NOLA are brewing in New Orleans (try their Hopitulas beer). All of them craft brews that marry with our region’s cuisine. With them we hope to revive the Deep South’s brewing traditions.

Or at least start a new tradition of the three beer lunch.

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.