Louisiana
Craft Beer Tour 2017: Louisiana
These photos were taken Saturday, October 21 at the Great Raft Brewing 4th Anniversary, in Shreveport, Louisiana.
As I spent the previous night in Vicksburg, which is on the east side of the Mississippi, and Louisiana is only a couple hours wide from the Mississippi border to Texas, I was going to have to plan this well if I wanted to visit any breweries in Louisiana. Fortunately, a name that kept coming up in conversation east of the Mississippi was Great Raft Brewing. Great Raft is located in Shreveport which is almost on the Louisiana/Texas border. Since it was a 2 1/2 hour drive from Vicksburg to Shreveport, and Great Raft opens at noon on Saturdays, I figured I would be able to arrive at Great Raft close to opening time, making it easy to try a few beers and snap some photos prior to moving on to Texas. I have to admit, I was pretty surprised when I arrived shortly after they opened only to discover their parking lot was full and I was going to have to park at a second lot down the street. Continue reading
Craft beers of New Orleans
Last week I spent a few days in New Orleans photographing a trade show; in my free time I decided to seek out locally brewed craft beers, preferably from New Orleans but anything brewed in Louisiana would do. For those of you familiar with the New Orleans area, I was staying by the New Orleans Convention Center which is about a mile from the French Quarter.
When I first arrived on Wednesday afternoon I met up with a couple of friends and we walked over to Crescent City Brewhouse, a brewpub that is across the street from the Jackson Brewery building. Apparently Jackson Brewery was once one of the largest breweries in the country; I did not make it inside. Crescent City Brewhouse offered five of their beers on tap; a Kölsch (my personal favorite), a pilsner, a Vienna lager, a Dunkel Munich Lager and a hefeweizen. All five were solid beers but there were no IPA’s and hoppiness was pretty much nonexistent; the ABV’s of all five were pretty low. Our server said they all range from 5% to 6% ABV; their Untappd information only lists the ABV of the Kölsch and shows it to be a 4.5%.
I had the Alligator Sausage Poboy sandwich which was pretty good. Since our server gave the impression that he was pretty knowledgeable about everything craft beer related in New Orleans I asked him for suggestions on other breweries or brewpubs in the area that I should visit. In fact, I specifically asked about NOLA Brewing and was told that they were solely a production brewery with no tasting room. I found out later that our server was pretty clueless about the craft beer scene in New Orleans or he intentionally misled me. It was hard to say. Crescent City Brewhouse is located at 527 Decatur Street in New Orleans. It is the only brewpub I found in New Orleans; the prices are fair, the food is okay and I would say that their beers represent the Louisiana style fairly well. They are open seven days a week and do have growlers to go. Continue reading