A brewing storm in Crescent City
Disembarking from a nonstop flight from Denver, the altimeter on my watch showed the elevation in New Orleans at -300 feet.
A quick calibration put the actual mark at 4 feet. But the humidity and the torrential rainstorm that flooded the local roads sure made it feel like being underwater.
The weather forced a recalibration of my travel plans, too. The pilgrimage to Louisiana Cajun country to visit the renowned Bayou Teche Brewing, a two-hour drive west of the city, now appeared washed out. So in a cab to the French Quarter, I plotted a new journey — to find craft beer in a cocktail town.
The idea seemed quixotic, to say the least. New Orleans is a place where alcohol seems to flow like water, but here, bitter is part of a Sazerac, not an India pale ale, and drinks are poured in glowing green Hand Grenades rather than a pint glass.
What I discovered, however, was a rebirth of beer in a city once known in the pre-prohibition days as the brewing capital of the South. And the renaissance is being led by three newer breweries, all with roots or inspiration from Colorado.
Courtyard Brewery
The soaking rain melted the old brick buildings in the city’s historic district with the clouds scraping the tallest ones, making the sky feel suffocatingly close to the Earth.
And dashing under awnings and live-oak canopies did little to keep my feet dry on the less than 2-mile walk southwest from downtown to Courtyard Brewery.
Like so many breweries, and like so much of this old city, it didn’t look like much from the outside, but inside it felt immediately like home. A rare bottle of The Mix from Casey Brewing and Blending, one of Colorado’s best breweries, sat empty on one of the tables after a party.
The weather didn’t hamper the crowd, most of which was dressed in colorful face paint, masks and wigs ahead of the night’s parade — the first of the Mardi Gras season.
A record player sat on one end of the bar and Scott Wood on the other. The brewery’s owner studied a new hop order on his laptop as he planned his next brew. He didn’t have time to talk at the moment, but instead invited me to a party along the Krewe du Vieux parade route that night.
In Colorado, while attending Naropa University in Boulder, he lived across the street from Southern Sun Brewery and had an epiphany about the craft beer culture. Returning to his native San Diego, he took a job in beer sales and soon began to think about opening a brewery.
Courtyard began making beer in 2014 as a nanobrewery that specialized in IPAS. “When I moved out here, the beer options were extremely limited, but especially on the IPA front,” he told me later.
He admits that he failed to make the hoppy-bitter West Coast IPA he intended, and instead landed a softer, more flavor-forward hazy style that is now so popular. The brewery’s hazy double IPA, Something Good, is one of the best beers I tried in the city.
“This is a huge wine and spirits market, and they are not really into bitterness except on the cocktail side,” he said. “But they like flavor, and they like a lot of flavor. So (hazy IPAS) have just become a natural fit.”
The hype built quickly, and Wood recently collaborated on beers with Great Notion and Modern Times, two craft cult favorites. He’s now looking to open a second location in the city. And in March, he plans to visit Denver to brew with Cerebral.
Just as I finished the piña colada-flavored Great Notion collaboration, Wood shouted to applause: “The sun’s out.”
Brieux Carré
The next day, I headed in the other direction, eastward past Jax Brewery, one of the icons that made New Orleans a brewing city — now only represented in a museum in its former building.
Bypassing the unremarkable Crescent City Brewhouse in the French Quarter, I took in a colorful and gritty New Orleans scene on the walk to Brieux Carré, a hole in the wall just off Frenchman Street in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood.
Open less than a year, the brewery quickly landed on the map, as evidenced by the brew tour that arrived at 11 a.m.
Like Wood, owner and brewer Robert Bostick started as a homebrewer and drew inspiration from the lack of IPAS in the city. The two most popular beers on his menu are Falcon Warrior, a bitter IPA, and Dad Jokes, a hazy double IPA that drinks like a mix of grapefruit and orange juice.
Brieux Carré was one of only two Louisiana breweries at the 2017 Great American Beer Festival. The trip, Bostick said, allowed them “to get our feet wet and see what Louisiana beer looked like next to national scale — and we really took that as a kick in the (pants).”
“Louisiana as a brewing state was so far behind the curve that we are all working to push and learn at a faster level to catch up to what the rest of the country is doing,” he said.
Until now, mass-produced beer dominated the city scene, he said. “The food scene and spirits scene is know very well throughout the country and the world ... but the beer scene has always been: What can we drink a lot of not really worry about it,” he said.
Now, he continued, “we are trying to make beer stand out.”
Parleaux Beer Lab
Hurricane Katrina closed the last big brewer, Dixie, in 2005 and took New Orleans off the beer map. From the destruction, NOLA Brewing was born, and with it the craft beer community.
A short stop at the venerable veteran along the Mississippi River, and soon I was headed to one of the newest, Parleaux Beer Lab in the Bywater neighborhood.
The brewery didn’t open until 3 p.m., so I wandered around the corner for a moment to Bacchanal Wine, a hot foodie destination with a beer cooler that featured Urban South and Second Line, two other New Orleans breweries helping to build the scene.
Parleaux’s beers are only available at the brewery. Owners and founders Eric and Leah Jensen opened in April 2017 as a neighborhood taproom with a large yard along the train track.
The brewery focuses on small-batch beers and every-rotating flavors, producing 30 beers so far with only two repeats.
“How chefs approach food and seasonality, we do that with beer,” said Leah Jensen. She is a Golden native, and assistant brewer Chuck Smock grew up in Louisville.
The brewery is drawing lines for release of its hazy IPAS but showcases a number of farmhouse styles. The socalled Orleaner Weisse brewed with satsumas from a tree in brewery’s yard stands out as an innovative take on a traditional style.
From Parleaux to Courtyard, Wood described the New Orleans craft scene best. “It’s still in its infancy. I think that our role so far is to act ... as tastemakers,” he said, adding: “There is a lot of potential here for growth and a lot of potential for creativity.”