Louisiana Has TWENTY Breweries

On the heels of a laughably ridiculously ignorant article that appeared in The Advocate this week (I'll get a little more into detail with that later), my Facebook thread (on which I posted the link to the journalistic travesty) had a very interesting discussion about what counts as a brewery?

I realized that I've been segregating brewpubs from my number and I don't think that was right. I think that if you brew beer and legally sell it to people in Louisiana, that should be considered a Louisiana brewery. Therefore, we should count Crescent City Brewhouse, The Old Rail Brewing Company, and, yes, Gordon Biersch, which is a franchise chain but does brew every drop of beer it sells on site. Locally. In New Orleans. The brewers there are talented and work hard.

The lines are getting so blurred, more and more each day. Courtyard is a very unique beer business model for the area. Broken Wheel is a brewery added to an existing restaurant so it's now a brewpub (but wasn't one originally). These diverse breweries will continue to evolve. So let's stop leaving brewpubs out in the cold and welcome them into the fold. I know that's how the state law is broken down, microbreweries/production breweries or brewpubs and never the twain shall meet, but that legislation is being re-evaluated and will hopefully be changing in the near future.

(Hm, I haven't heard anything about that lately, anyone got a sitrep?)

So here's my up to date list of Louisiana breweries, as of October 7, 2015. (In order of their opening.)

1. Abita Abita Springs, opened in 1986
2. Crescent City Brewhouse (brewpub) New Orleans, opened in 1991
3. Gordon Biersch (brewpub) (chain) New Orleans, opened in 2004
4. Covington Brewhouse Covington, opened in 2005 (as Heiner Brau)
5. NOLA Brewing New Orleans, opened in 2009
6. Bayou Teche Arnaudville, opened in March 2010
7. Parish Brewing Broussard, opened in July 2010
8. Tin Roof Baton Rouge, opened in November 2010
9. Chafunkta Mandeville, opened in March 2013
10. Old Rail Brewing Company (brewpub) Mandeville, opened July 2013
11. Great Raft Shreveport, opened December 2013
12. Red River Shreveport, opened December 2013
13. 40 Arpent Arabi, opened March 2014
14. Gnarly Barley Hammond, opened May 2014
15. Courtyard Brewery New Orleans, opened October 2014
16. Mudbug Thibodaux, opened December 2014
17. Broken Wheel Marksville (Central LA), opened January 2015
18. Flying Heart Bossier, opened April 2015
19. Second Line New Orleans, opened August 2015
20. Cajun Brewing Lafayette, opened September 2015

I'm going to keep updating it, and I've added a new tab on this website's homepage with it so that SOMEONE has an actual, up-to-date list of brewery numbers and basic info. Because apparently it's too difficult for some writers to research? Because I guess just anyone can jump in and do beer writing, I mean, it's just beer, right? No complexity or sophistication or moving parts to good ole beer, no siree!