The three best days of my life:
1.Being Born
2.Getting Married
3.Touring the Abita Beer company Brewery

The three worst days of my life:
1.Being Born
2.Getting married
3.Touring the Abita Beer Company Brewery

If you’re ever in Louisiana, the Abita Beer Company Brewery is worth your time.

It took us two days to find it, but it was worth it.

We left Cook’s place in New Orleans on Wednesday to go tour the brewery and then continue heading west.  Melissa got us lost in New Orleans, so we didn’t make it to Abita Springs in time.

We could have just moved on.  But at that point we had invested too much of our time into finding that damn brewery.  Besides, I was genuinely curious about the process, given my natural affinity for the product.

So we pitched our tent (literally) at a nearby state park.  Fontainebleu (pronounced “Fountain Blue” by the locals) is a killer state park.  At $12 it’s a bit more expensive than the national forest, but it comes with showers, some level of security and a nice beach.

Thursday we left good and early to get to the brewery in time for the 2:00 tour.  Good thing, we gave ourselves 90 minutes to make the 30 minute trip and arrived only 10 minutes early.

They call it a “tour”, but really it’s a free all-you-can-drink beer buffet.

There were 8 delicious Abita beers on tap.  These weren’t taster cups either.  This was a self-service, walk up to the taps and poor yourself a glass of whatever you want, extravaganza.

Melissa and I assumed that it was a one glass type of deal.  Wrong.

You’ve got about 30 minutes to try some beer they said.

The only other couple there had a pizza delivered from a nearby shop.  Fantastic idea.

More and more people trickled in, making it a quickly intimate group of 25 young people held together by the world’s oldest social krazy glue.

At about 2:30 we were told to get another beer or top off what we had so that the official tour could begin.

We learned all about the history of Abita beer and what makes it so fantastic (it’s the water), we saw the giant vats and learned about the beer brewing process.

At 2:38 we were back in the room with the bar and told to try some more beers.

They kicked us out at 3:30

I feel like we got our money’s worth out of that free tour.  You can’t put a price on education.

It came at a cost though, I wouldn’t say Melissa’s an angry drunk, just a very loud and passionate one.  Accidents happen when there’s no tab.

It’s 10 p.m. now, we’re laying in our tent, wishing we had made better choices today and sipping a 20 oz coke, which is the only one we have and the only we’re going to get after dropping $40 for po’boy sandwiches at the Abita Brewpub down the street.

That’s how they get ya’.  That’s how they get ya’.

Meanwhile, Melissa’s commenting on how long of a beer article this is.  It’s a barticle, she said, no… a beerticle.