Brewing on bayou

By: RAYMOND PARTSCH III
Managing Editor

Karlos Knott and his brothers took a family tradition and transformed into a business.
“We don’t work on Sundays,” Knott said. “So every Sunday my brothers and I would home brew a batch of beer to drink two or three weeks down the road. Our families always get together on Sundays and smoke a brisket or have a crawfish boil so we would always have beer to drink with it. I think one Sunday we drank too much beer and decided to open up a brewery.”
That brewery would become Bayou Teche Brewing located on the family farm in Arnaudville (which has been in the family since 1780), which was the first micro-brewery in the state outside of the New Orleans area.
After starting out producing nine kegs per week in a 100-square foot old railroad car back in 2009, Karlos and his brothers (Byron and Dorsey) have seen the company grow into an operation that now bottles thousands of beers in its current 10,000 square-foot facility, which are distributed all across the state.
“You can find us everywhere but Wal-Mart,” Knott said. “We really do better than we should.”
Knott, who serves as the company’s president and brew master, developed a passion for brewing while being stationed in West Germany as a Calvary Scout in the United States Army.
“I left here as a young man and went to Germany thinking I knew everything about beer because here we drink a lot of beer,” Knott said. “I get to Germany and my platoon sergeant says to stay in the barracks for at least a couple of weeks. Of course I went out and ordered myself a beer and it was the best thing I had ever drank in my life and at that point I realized that I didn’t know anything about beer.”
Knott would then learn first-hand how to develop craft beer after he was transferred to Seattle, right about the time that the city was experiencing a boom in micro-brewery.
“We would go every weekend and tour one of those breweries like Red Hook or Pyramid and they had a lot home brew shops in the city as well,” Knott said. “That’s where I started to learn how to brew.”
Even though it may have taken years before Knott and his family opened Bayou Teche Brewery, which uses French and Belgium grains, Canadian-based malt to help produce the 19 different beers per year, it hasn’t taken long for the business to expand.
The company’s facility now has 15 ferment tanks, which are named after towns along the Bayou Teche. The group also produces certain beers that are placed in old wooden French wine and bourbon barrels.
Visitors can see all of that first hand on a 45-minute free tour that is available six days a week. If visitors like they can have the tour done in French, by none other than Knott’s father Floyd.
Unfortunately no kids are allowed on the tour.
At the end of the tour, visitors walk into the sampling room where you can buy T-shirts, hats and other Bayou Teche Brewing merchandise, including of course six packs of bottled beer, including such popular beers as the company’s pale ale known as LA-31 Bière Pâle or the LA-31 Boucanèe designed to go along with a smoked meat dish. The company debuted the beer at the Smoked Meat Festival in Ville Platte a few years ago.
The main attraction in the room though is having the opportunity to sample some of the company’s beers on tap, like the Biere Joi Percolator which is aged in a barrel and features Louisiana’s own Mello Joy coffee. For $5.38 you can get a sampler of four different beers on tap or for $10.75 you can sample eight different brews. For those that don’t want a beer, they can also purchase a Stewart’s Fountain Classics.
In addition to the tour, visitors on Saturdays can experience live music. On average between 200 and 400 people show up fill the 20x18 covered patio and the surrounding areas to listen to live music starting around midday to into the night. A food truck comes every Saturday to provide eats.
“Most places you go the young people drink craft beer and the older people don’t,” Knott said. “But here that isn’t the case. Here in Louisiana people know good taste here and know good food because they are raised to cook and raised to taste things. They are more open minded. We are blessed in that way because we have three generations of people out here on Saturdays.”
The brothers also recently bought an old bait shop turned church that stood on The Atchafalaya Basin and have relocated it to the property. After renovations are done to the building, it will be open as a small dance hall that can host events. Also in the works are placing pre-manufactured cabins on the property so guests can make a weekend of their trip to the brewery.
Now that once Sunday tradition has become a large business, has that dampen Knott’s passion for beer? Not at all.
“At the end of the day this isn’t selling life insurance,” Knott said. “Its a fun job. If we would have known how fun it was we would have started ten years earlier. We meet so many people that are excited about a brewery in Acadiana and tourists who come here and just love the way Cajuns live. It has been a blessing. We’ve just had a great time.”

La Louisane de pres or 'Louisiana up close' is a semi-annual feature series from The Ville Platte Gazette which showcases affordable attractions and establishments that are authentic to the storied landscape of Louisiana. This Sunday: Bayou Teche Brewing in Arnaudville. Next Sunday: Frosty Inn in Ville Platte.