Abita Brew Pub

Abita Brew Pub
Abita Springs, LA

by David Faciane

Over the Christmas break I had the great pleasure of visiting the Abita brewpub in Abita Springs, on the northshore. For a longtime Abita consumer, it was a required stop on the itinerary that weekend. It's not a bad drive from the city I suppose, but as my wife and I were visiting my parents in Slidell, it was practically down the street from me. :-)

From the I-12 exit it's exactly 4.5 miles to the brew pub. I know this because those are the LONGEST 4.5 miles in the world when you are thirsting for an ice cold Abita straight from the tap! The first thing I noticed when we got to Abita Springs was a fairly large parking area with lots of cars. We had arrived. In the words of the immortal Homer Simpson--"Woohoo!!". The place was packed, and people seemed to be converging on it from all sides. Keep in mind this was two days after Christmas, a Wednesday! (There are tours of the brewing facility, but only on Saturday).

Inside was nice and roomy with high ceilings. Although I was thinking about beer and not interior design, I did notice the brew pub was somewhat larger than I expected, with a fair number of tables. Curiously, the Non-smoking area is much smaller than the Smoking area; keep this in mind if you don't like to wait and don't mind a little smoke (the place was well-ventilated). The brew tanks were visible in the back and near the front there is a large bar with (I counted) eight taps. Naturally (N'awlins) I made a beeline for the bar.

You can try a sampler of five beers in 4 oz glasses for $4.50. I think they are supposed to give you the mass-produced stuff (Turbodog, etc.) but I talked the nice barmaid into letting me hit the brewpub-only beers (Andygator, Purple Haze, and the Brewmasters Special, and others). By the way, if you're not into beer, they also have a few wines and of course their very own Abita Root Beer. If you haven't had it, the root beer is a little sweeter than Barq's, but every bit as good.

All of their beers are very good, but my favorites are the XXXMas Ale (seasonal; you can't get it except, yep, right around Christmas), the Bock (also seasonal) and the Turbodog. The Xmas Ale and Bock were similar to this somewhat unrefined palate-- kind of like Bass Ale in taste and color. Turbodog is of course a much heavier, beer and more complex in taste. It seems to get the wider distribution of the Abita beers, as I can get the 'Dog back home in Florida, but rarely any others. Their other beers, Amber and Golden are also quite good, with a taste more akin to mass-produced American beers, but definitely a cut above.

While I tried all the beers, we waited for a table in the non-smoking section. The wait was over 50 minutes, which is long enough to try the sampler and order a big glass of your favorite. The food was good-better than anything you get in most pub settings-- but not overly-exciting for New Orleans, the City that Forgot to Diet. They had run out of the special and also oysters, so I settled for a shrimp po-boy, which was pretty good. My wife had the crawfish cakes, which were excellent.

After lunch we hit the merchandise counter, conveniently located near the bar. :-) There are plenty of beer huggies, mugs, shot glasses and of course T-shirts. I picked up the "Vic 'n Natly" Abita shirt that features Vic proclaiming, "It's the rite beer, Cap!". You can also purchase six-packs and cases of Abita, or a half-gallon bottle of your favorite brew for $9.00 ($5 for the bottle, $4 to fill it, and yes, you can bring it back for seconds). The bottles have screw-on tops, so the carbonation will escape faster than with the regular bottled beer, but this is the only way to bring home a taste of the special brews that are only available in the pub. The barmaid said the carbonation would be good for about three days, but I never gave it that long. My bottle barely made it back to Florida before I drained it ;-)

I've spent more than a few hours inside some of the finest microbreweries in Colorado, Florida and other states, and I have to say that I recommend the Abita Brewpub unreservedly. "It's the rite beer Cap!"

David Faciane <dave@nws.fsu.edu> | Meteorologist/[Sys|Web]admin
NOAA National Weather Service, Tallahassee, Florida
Web: http://thunder.met.fsu.edu/~nws/faciane | finger for PGP key

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Copyright © 1996, David Faciane. Used with permission.