Brewery Tour: Bayou Teche Brewing

The Bayou Teche patio is always a lively scene.

Members of the Knott family lead the tours that are conducted on Saturdays, pointing out the brewery’s official pirogue boat – flat-bottomed to navigate the bayou’s shallow waters – and telling tales about how one of the Knott relatives was a bootlegger during Prohibition.

Their great-grandfather Charley would dress up as a priest to make his moonshine runs into Texas. Since South Louisiana and East Texas were heavily Catholic, no police officer ever searched his booze-laden and faux priest-driven automobile.

Karlos Knott said that on one of his Texas runs, one of Charley’s customers didn't have the cash for the moonshine and offered a monkey up in trade instead, which he took. "He had a little illicit bar in Arnaudville and he set that monkey up on the bar,” said Knott. “If you paid a dollar, which was a lot in those days, you could buy the monkey a beer and he would drink it. His name was Macaques á Charley – French for Charley's Monkey – and he was something of a local celebrity. He survived Prohibition and continued his job at my great-grandfather's establishment for many years. Older folks still ask my mom about that monkey."

The Knott family leads tours of Bayou Teche every Saturday.