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If not, you’ve certainly run across its most well-known brews: Purple Haze, a wheat beer brewed with raspberry puree, and Turbodog, a dark, swampy brown ale with a rich malt character.
The brewery has been turning out Cajun-tinged beers since 1986, when two homebrewers, Jim Patton and Rush Cummings, helped pull together enough cash to launch the first craft brewery in the Southeast. Since then Abita, which is currently sold about 40 states, has become the beer of New Orleans, for many as synonymous with the eccentric city as Mardi Gras beads or muffuletta.
But since Abita lies roughly 40 miles north, many visitors to New Orleans don’t make time to stop by for a tour. Big mistake. With a plush tasting room that was added in early 2008, the brewery has made it on to the list of must-see attractions for any fan of the Crescent City, well worth the trouble of trekking across the massive lake.
Plunked next to a mobile home park near tiny Abita Springs, population 2,409, the brewery is an unmistakable ode to its home state. “We have tried from the very beginning to be a part of the culture of Louisiana,” said David Blossman, Abita’s president and one of the original investors in the brewery. “It’s easy to say that, but it’s harder to actually be it.”
6 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves removed and stems discarded
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves removed and stems discarded
2 to 3 juniper berries
3 cloves garlic
2 cups (500 mL) light to medium bodied brown ale
1 tbsp (15 mL) red wine vinegar
4 1/2 cups (1.125 L) veal stock
Instructions:
Season veal cheeks well with salt and pepper. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
In a large, deep, heavy-bottomed frying pan over medium-high heat, heat oil until very hot but not smoking. Add veal cheeks and brown on all sides.
Remove meat from the pan and drain excess oil. Reduce heat to medium and return cheeks to the pan along with rosemary, thyme, juniper berries, garlic, beer and vinegar.
In a separate medium saucepan, bring veal stock to a boil and pour over cheeks.
Cover the pan with a lid or foil and continue to cook in the oven for six hours or until a knife passes easily through the cheeks.
The Gose style started in a place called Goslar, in Germany, where minerals from the nearby Harz Mountains provided the River Gose with a tangy, mineral quality that the locals described as “copper water.”
This water provided the base for what would become Gose, a light, tangy, and salty beverage spiced with coriander that had the Bavarian region of Saxony buzzing as far back as 1239, the year of the first recorded mention of Gose from one Duke Otto von Braunschweig.
Gose was especially hot in Leipzig, capital of the German state of Saxony where, at the height of its popularity, at least 80 licensed Leipziger Gose houses served the briny suds. Things were groovy for Gose from 1738 until the early 20th century, when Germany’s geopolitical affairs detracted from time that might have otherwise been spent enjoying the delightful sour-wheat concoction.
By the end of World War II, the last remaining Gose brewery had ceased production, and save for one small brewer in Leipzig from 1949 to 1966, the venerable Gose had ceased to be, and it took twenty years for a man named Lothar Goldhahn to revive the style at the Schultheiss Weissbier brewery.
A couple decades later, Gose has finally regained a firm foothold both in Germany and America.
“I’m not the type of person who can sit still,” says Jorge Guzman, the executive chef of Surly Brewing’s new brewpub in Minneapolis. “I always have to be doing something.”
For Guzman, that something has always been cooking. More recently, he has become part of the movement taking brewpub menus to a new level of sophistication.
“I’m from the Yucatán,” he said with conviction, “and for me nothing compares to that cuisine. It’s distinctive from the rest of the country. It is very deeply rooted in Mayan cooking with influences from Danish and Lebanese scattered throughout. I’ve always remembered that food and the women who cooked it.”
Guzman moved to St. Louis as a boy, where he eventually got a job in the kitchen at Chez Leon French bistro at age 15. It was there he got hooked on the family atmosphere of restaurants and the culture of cooking. He would go on to flame burgers in college and attend the Culinary Institute of America in New York. He landed in Minnesota, where he worked in the kitchens at Red Stone, Tejas, Corner Table, and Solera before joining the team at Surly Brewing.
The brewery is located in Jackson, Wyoming, home to the world-famous Jackson Hole ski resort near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. “Our location in Jackson is a very magical place,” said head brewer Cory Buenning. “The water is very clear – you can drink the tap water. It's tasty. The location has also attracted quality people who stay.”
Many members of the long-term brewing staff have been with the brewery for over 15 years. Buenning has been the head brewer there for seven years, working at the brewery (known to locals as “the Pub”) for a total of 17 years. He's been in the brewing industry for over two decades and has been a judge at the Great American Beer Festival on and off for the past 10 years.
Buenning credits the area's water as one of the keys to SRB's winning beer. Sourced from wells nearby the headwaters of the Snake River, the pure water makes for smooth and refreshing brews. “You don't see anyone spraying the fields around here,” Buenning said. “There aren't any fertilizers or pesticides.”
In the second of two installments, the founders of Founders take on some more subjective topics.
Was there a first beer you remember that made you realize you really liked beer?
Mike: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was the beer that really got me hooked on this idea that beer could taste different than the yellow fizzy stuff we were all drinking in high school or early college.
Dave: The first beers I experienced were stolen off my father’s back porch when I was a teenager. My father was not much of a beer connoisseur and he typically had the cheapest beer he could find. A lot of Wiedemann and Falstaff and even a beer out of Canada called 50 Cream. When I was 17 years old, I went to visit my oldest brother in California and he was responsible for introducing me to craft beer. When I got off the plane, the first thing we did was stop at a little bottle shop, and I was not used to seeing beer sold by the bottle. I was used to seeing it sold by the 6-pack or the case. We bought a few bottles of Mendocino County Red Tail Ale. When we cracked that beer I called it the sip that changed my world. I never knew beer had that much flavor.
Photographer Nicolas Landemard created this photo essay during his recent visit to one of the hallowed halls of Belgian brewing, which is located in a small industrial park in Brussels. Brewery owner Jean-Pierre Van Roy has recently announced Cantillon will add an additional barrel aging facility near the brewery to help satisfy the increasing demand from the U.S. market for Belgian sours.
Brew day begins at Brasserie Cantillon, which has been making lambic, gueze, faro, and kriek since 1900.
Join us in the Sky Bar at 5 Seasons Westside for The Beer Connoisseur® Club kickoff event!
Complimentary beer will be available for the first hour (or while it lasts), provided by our BC Network brewery partners. 5 Seasons will be offering $3 pints and Brewmeister Crawford Moran will be providing a special beer from their cellar.
When you arrive, grab a raffle ticket to be entered into drawings for free giveaways of glassware, BC Network member swag and more.
Mingle and have fun with our staff, industry partners, fellow media, fans and loyal subscribers as we unveil the details of our new beer club. Don’t miss this night of fun and camaraderie. We’ll see you there!
When Rob Hill attended a special beer and wine dinner hosted by The Boston Beer Company at the Smith and Wollensky restaurant on Boston’s waterfront in 2006, he realized his drinking life needed a course correction. The president and co-founder of Boston Uncorked, an organization for wine enthusiasts, Hill discovered he had a palate for darker, maltier beers – and that beer could be a better accompaniment to fine food than wine.
Despite spending time developing an affinity for white wines in California during a career in the Navy and later as a software salesman and despite being engulfed in red wines once he moved to Boston, Hill voted for beer over wine in three of the five pairings presented that night at Smith and Wollensky.
“I didn’t know much about beer,” recalled Hill, who now oversees the beer sales at Total Wine & More. “Prior to that dinner in Boston, my memories of beer were more about my college days, travel overseas and typical American pale lagers.”
The beer versus wine faceoff dinner was filmed by Boston Beer and footage was used in a TV commercial, one that helped the Sam Adams brand change the perspective on American craft beer. For Hill, it was a life-altering event. Having never really taken to red wine in favor of the Chardonnays from California, he realized his imbibing life was finally in balance, telling himself, “I like white wine and dark beer.”
The Gose style started in a place called Goslar, in Germany, where minerals from the nearby Harz Mountains provided the River Gose with a tangy, mineral quality that the locals described as “copper water.”
Buenning credits the area's water as one of the keys to SRB's winning beer. Sourced from wells nearby the headwaters of the Snake River, the pure water makes for smooth and refreshing brews. “You don't see anyone spraying the fields around here,” Buenning said. “There aren't any fertilizers or pesticides.”
