Brady McKellar, managing director and brewmaster at Vermilionville, pours a Le Caucheniar beer Wednesday, August 7, 2024, at the folk life park in Lafayette, La. Pine needles, ginger and persimmons may not be the first ingredients that come to mind when it comes to brewing beer. And yet, those are ingredients and flavors from historic recipes used at the Vermilionville Brew-House, located on the banks of the Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette.
Vermilionville is a living history museum that uses original structures and historical interpreters to share what life was like for the people of southwest Louisiana through the 19th century. True to Vermilionville's mission, the beers brewed on-site are crafted in honor of the past. Its brewery is the latest addition to the area's ever-growing craft brew scene.
Brady McKellar, Vermilionville managing director and head brewer, says the process starts with researching what people were gathering, brewing and drinking in the area from about 1760 to 1890. Three beers made at The Vermilionville Brew-House, Le Cauchemar, from left, Les Tatailles molasses brown ale, and BoukiÕs Biere De Gingembre, are pictured Wednesday, August 7, 2024, at the folk life park in Lafayette, La. "There's a lot of very cool, very new, very forward-looking kind of beer in the area," says McKellar.
"What we're doing is creating a very backward-looking beer — and so it's a very, very different taste." So far McKellar has crafted three different brews based on historic recipes, with some twists, like adding pine-y tasting hops. "In the original recipe here, it calls for one clean pine needle clump to be dropped in every bottle before you close it," says McKellar, pointing to a bottle of Le Cauchemar, one of Vermilionville's beers.
"I've talked with every brewer I know, and nobody can tell me what that's for. It's not an additive to help boost your yeast production. There's not going to be a whole lot of flavor that goes through it.
But for me, when I put hops in, I use a hops that has a little bit of that kind of pine flavor to it, as a nod to that historical recipe." Brady McKellar, managing director and brewmaster at Vermilionville, talks about the new Vermilionville Brew-House Wednesday, August 7, 2024, at the folk life park in Lafayette, La. Le Cauchemar was created from a persimmon-based recipe that McKellar says was handed down by enslaved Africans.
It's a bright and light-tasting beer, with notes of satsuma and honey. Les Tatailles is reminiscent of an English brown ale but with more molasses and a touch of ginger — ingredients that would have been common in the region. And Bouki's Bière de Gingembre, inspired by a Caribbean recipe, has a much stronger ginger taste than most ginger beers — a nod to the fact that ginger was frequently used as a preservative, since hops were not as available as they were in Europe.
Brady McKellar, managing director and brewmaster at Vermilionville, talks about the new Vermilionville Brew-House Wednesday, August 7, 2024, at the folk life park in Lafayette, La. The beers are typical of mass-market offerings, coming in at 4.7% alcohol by volume for Le Cauchemar, 5.
8% for Les Tatailles and 8.5% for the ginger beer. McKellar says that he adjusted for modern expectations in the fermentation process, and historically, the beers would likely have been much lighter.
"If we look at colonial-era America, women would just make beers at home for their family to drink. And I mean husband, wife children — everyone drank the beer," he says. "It was called small beer, or green beer, and would have had around 1.
5% ABV. The Les Tatailles recipe very well may have been considered a small beer. They would have let it sit up overnight, maybe a couple of nights, and serve it for breakfast.
" McKellar explains that during the early days of our country, "strong beers, or true beers" were made for men to drink at the tavern. A sign greets visitors to The Vermilionville Brew-House, Wednesday, August 7, 2024, at the folk life park in Lafayette, La. McKellar says to brew beers that comply with federal regulations, he had to make adjustments for some recipes — like using a higher proportion of grain for fermentation than would have been available in the past.
"Historically, people were making beer out of what they could find," he said. "There are recipes where people made beer out of potatoes. There's one I wish I could find for a pineapple and rice beer that's from this area.
" When you're a historian who brews, it's less about market testing and distribution and more about giving people an experience that connects them to the past. According to McKellar, it all started out of a desire to understand the communal experiences that our forebears enjoyed. "I make these really old recipes exactly as written, and then it's a matter of, how do we recreate this flavor and aroma and experience, but with something that's going to meet modern standards of sanitation and what a beer is meant to be," he says.
"And we add a little bit of modernization, so that we can land on a taste that our community is interested in." For beer drinkers looking to imbibe a bit of history with their brew, the Vermilionville Brew-House sells bottles of Le Cauchemar, Les Tatailles and Bouki's Ginger Beer at La Cuisine de Maman, Vermilionville's on-site restaurant at 300 Fisher Road in Lafayette. McKellar says six packs will be available for sale at the museum's gift shop soon.
.
