Gameday Beers of the Week: LSU
Geaux Creauxft Beeauxr or however this Cajun word construction is supposed to work. I swear, for every 10 feet that the state goes below sea level they just add a letter onto the spelling of their vowel sounds.
Six-pack beer of the week: NOLA Hopitoulas IPA
Forget Abita; their Amber is fine enough I guess but even the most old-guard of jazz clubs on Frenchman Street have a formidable compliment of beers from New Orleans’ real craft beer choice — NOLA Brewing. They’re in the city, right on Tchoupitoulas Street, truly local. And I saw the IPA named after that street, Hopitoulas, on tap pretty much everywhere in New Orleans. It’s legitimately one of the hoppiest IPAs in the South, with a pretty classic citrus pith bitterness. It’s easier to crush bottles of Abita Purple Haze or something, but for this game you’ll want a beer that can compete with whatever homebrewed malt beverage conditioned on State Fair mini corn dogs inside of an absinthe cask thing that LSU fans roll into Tuscaloosa tailgates with.
Celebration beer of the week: Bayou Teche Biere Joi
Bayou Teche, meanwhile, brews down in the Acadian swap lands. While their money makers are a pale ale and a schwarzbier, they prefer to brew experimental malty farmhouse ales. Think France’s biere de garde style, only gone Cajun, expressing the terroir of Carcosa. Biere Joi is a dark ale aged on French oak barrels with coffee and chili peppers. This’ll wake you up with more force than the triple-reverse fake 2-point conversion drop kick for the extra point attempt that Les Miles will call to make it a harder-than-it-has-to-be tie ball game with 8 minutes left in the second quarter. Heck, think beyond celebration beer — use this to wake yourself up with the next morning.
Grandpa beer of the week: Dixie
There’s a neat looking warehouse in New Orleans that’s been shut down ever since the Katrina flooding. You can still clearly make out “Dixie Beer” on that building’s silver top, even though Dixie Lager hasn’t been brewed there for a decade plus. It’d be great to have the brewery back in operation someday instead of settling for contracting the beer in Wisconsin. Dixie lager has been in production since 1907, making it one of the South’s oldest, premier commercial lagers. It tastes how you’d expect: virtually indistinguishable from other regional lagers. It’s maybe the most normal thing to ever come out of New Orleans.
Louisiana beer to avoid at all costs: Abita Andygator
Andygator gave me one of my worst hangovers I’ve ever had, and I only had a single pint of it. It bill itself as a “Helles Dopplebock” which essentially means its an imperial strength pale lager. If malt liquor can be likened to a 34 year old guy with no ambition or career prospects, then Andygator is that same guy at age 22, right in the beginnings of his crippling porn addiction. It smells and tastes like Grape Nuts and bubble gum & a hint of grocery store Pinot Grigio. It tastes like spent grain and cotton candy. It’s all grain sweetness, it’s 8% ABV, it tastes & feels like 12% ABV, and it is tantamount to a war crime. I would legitimately drink that homebrew conditioned on mini corn dogs before I ever so much as smell an Andygator ever again.
