Brewery Tour: Bayou Teche Brewing

When you pull into Bayou Teche Brewing’s property in Arnaudville, expect some genuine Cajun hospitality. The brewery is named after the neighboring waterway, the Bayou Teche and is right outside Lafayette, Louisiana, arguably the epicenter of all things Cajun.

Bayou Teche Brewing is a family business – Karlos, Byron, and Dorsey Knott and their families live on the surrounding properties and all work together every day to bring their beer to the community and to educate folks about Cajun culture. The beers are specifically crafted and brewed to complement the region’s cuisine and showcase local ingredients. Like much of Louisiana culture, the brewery has a distinct European influence, with the predominant use of French and German malts and hops.

Karlos Knott calls his family’s business “a cultural brewery.” The Knott brothers link the beer they make and drink with the food they eat, the music they play and listen to, the dialect they speak, and the Cajun culture they love.

Right: LA 31 Biere Pale is Bayou Teche’s top seller.

Although the brewery’s taproom is open all week long, the best and most joyous way to experience the Bayou Teche Brewing experience is to show up on Saturday for tours, music, and a general good time. Locals and visitors alike mingle while sipping beer and listening to local bands like Sweet Cecilia, Diego Martin-Perez, Linzay Young & Joel Savoy, Beausoleil Trio, Jimmy Breaux, the Blake Miller Band, and, on special occasions, the Grammy-nominated Lost Bayou Ramblers. (Founding member Louis Michot is also an employee at the brewery.)

The weekends have become too busy for the informal crawfish boils and pig roasts of days past, but Lafayette area food trucks fill the niche with food like jambalaya, Cajun-tinged BBQ and creative burgers.

You’ll see people spread out on the side patio of the brewery at picnic tables or folding chairs unpacked from the back of the car, drinking beer, talking to their friends, meeting new people, and, in some cases, doing a two-step to the live music that’s playing. (The shows are always free, but the hardworking musicians appreciate tips.)

The Bayou Teche patio is always a lively scene.

Members of the Knott family lead the tours that are conducted on Saturdays, pointing out the brewery’s official pirogue boat – flat-bottomed to navigate the bayou’s shallow waters – and telling tales about how one of the Knott relatives was a bootlegger during Prohibition.

Their great-grandfather Charley would dress up as a priest to make his moonshine runs into Texas. Since South Louisiana and East Texas were heavily Catholic, no police officer ever searched his booze-laden and faux priest-driven automobile.

Karlos Knott said that on one of his Texas runs, one of Charley’s customers didn’t have the cash for the moonshine and offered a monkey up in trade instead, which he took. “He had a little illicit bar in Arnaudville and he set that monkey up on the bar,” said Knott. “If you paid a dollar, which was a lot in those days, you could buy the monkey a beer and he would drink it. His name was Macaques á Charley – French for Charley’s Monkey – and he was something of a local celebrity. He survived Prohibition and continued his job at my great-grandfather’s establishment for many years. Older folks still ask my mom about that monkey.”

The Knott family leads tours of Bayou Teche every Saturday.

Google Maps put together an online tour back in 2013, which is a great way to get the feel of the place. However, the brewery has expanded significantly since then, with four new 60-barrel fermenters (each named for towns that sit on the banks of the Bayou Teche) installed at the end of last year. It’s also more crowded due to an ever-increasing number of whiskey, bourbon and wine barrels the brewers are using to age their beer.

The taproom serves Bayou Teche’s core lineup: LA 31 Biere Pale, the flagship “Louisiana pale ale,” Passionee, a passion fruit wheat ale, LA 31 Biere Noir, a German-style schwarzbier, Boucanee, a cherrywood smoked wheat beer, and Acadie, a rustic French Bière de Garde-style ale. There will also be seasonal and barrel-aged beer available, along with taproom-only experimental beers. These guys will experiment with anything – in addition to hops, malt, and yeast tinkering, the brewery once served up a duck ale, based on the British “cock ale” style, with a duck stuffed with ginger and kumquats added to the boil. The beer sold out almost immediately. So, you never know what will be in store when visiting these crazy Cajuns.

If possible, check out the crawfish pond just behind the brewery. Not only are crawfish local delicacies, but their habitat is perfect for utilizing the naturally cleaned waste water that comes out of the brewery. The water is cleaned and treated through plants and other natural processes in a three-pond system designed by the University of Louisiana and the LSU Agriculture Department. It’s a great example of how attuned the brewery is to the balance of its surroundings on even the most basic level.

In addition to the brewery’s Saturday tours, arrangements can be made in advance for private tours for large groups, or even tours in French. The taproom is open Monday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. The brewery and taproom are closed on Sundays.

Bayou Teche Brewing

1106 Bushville Hwy.

Arnaudville LA 70512

[email protected]

(337) 754-5122

Tours

Saturday

10:30 a.m., Noon, 2 p.m., 6 p.m.

A view of the Bayou Teche from the brewery.