Visitors come for a number of things that the city does like nowhere else: the music, the food, the architecture. I, however, was in town with just one thing in mind — beer.
The history of brewing in New Orleans is as cloudy as an unfiltered ale, little known outside its confines. Once a regional beer capital, it turned out a slew of popular brands like Falstaff, Jax, Regal and Dixie.
Now there are only a handful of breweries in the area, including Abita, Heiner Brau and a newcomer named NOLA Brewing Company. The good news is that over a well-hopped weekend you can sample all the local brews, tour their birthplaces and learn the story of the once — and possibly future — beer town of the South. The local brewing scene is concentrated these days in suburban St. Tammany Parish, on the north shore of the vast Lake Pontchartrain opposite the Big Easy. So that’s where I headed one morning, with an old college buddy along as designated driver, flitting over the brown lake like a water spider on the seemingly endless causeway.
About an hour out of New Orleans we turned off the highway into downtown Covington, where, in a barnlike building that was once a hardware store, the Heiner Brau brewery stands.
The air around the building dripped with the thick and unmistakable malty sweet smell of brewers hard at work. Inside, under a latticework of cedar beams, a few guys in wool caps moved among rows of shiny copper kettles and tanks. We found Henryk Orlik, the brewmaster and owner known as Heiner, sitting in his brightly lit office.
Mr. Orlik, a native of Germany, has been brewing since the age of 16. He immigrated to America in 1994 with his wife, Angela, and their children to get in on the blossoming craft-beer movement. After stops in Cleveland, at the nearby Abita brewery and in North Carolina, he started Heiner Brau in late 2004.
“I did nothing else with my life” other than brewing, Mr. Orlik, who is 53, said in a thick German accent. He stays busy producing a light, floral Kölsch and a dark brown Maerzen year-round, as well as a rotation of five seasonal brews.
