ABITA BREWING COMPANY WAS FOUNDED IN 1986 IN the piney woods just outside Abita Springs. Abita Springs is about 30 miles north of New Orleans and has long been known for its artesian waters. Today, it is just as well known for its great local craft beer like Abita Purple Haze, Strawberry Lager, and Amber Lager. The original brewery is now a charming 100 seat brewpub frequented by locals and tourists alike.

In 1986, craft beer was still in its infancy. In their first year, the brewery produced 1,500 barrels of beer. The beer was popular and by 1994, the operation moved up the road to a larger facility in Covington, Louisiana. Today, they brew more than 125,000 barrels of beer and 13,500 barrels of soda in this state of the art facility. Abita Brewing has continued to grow over the years. The company was ranked 16th on the Brewers Association’s list of the Top 50 biggest craft breweries in America in 2021 by sales volume. Still privately owned and operated by local shareholders, the team takes great pride in brewing with the highest quality ingredients, using local products when possible.

It all starts with the water. It’s the reason the Abita Brewing Company is located in beautiful Abita Springs, Louisiana. While most other breweries must filter and chemically treat their water for the brewing process, Abita does neither. It is taken straight from the source. The water is drawn from a deep artesian well in the Southern Hills aquifer system. Over 3,000 feet deep in some areas, it contains fresh water kept pristine in underground structures that are more than 2,000 years old. This water has been tested and shown to be free of manmade pollutants, including Tritium, a man-made radioactive isotope that marks all surface waters.

Today, you can consume this wonderful water in any of Abita’s brews, including the root beer. To find abita near you, visit abita.com and type your zip code into the ‘Find Abita’ tab. Below are just a few of our favorites, available locally.

ABITA STRAWGATOR , 8% ABV, 27 IBU

Strawgator is the fusion of Strawberry Lager sweetness with the bite of Andygator. This golden lager is made with malted barley and wheat. It is hopped with German Perle hops for a delicate hop flavor. After filtration, generous amounts of fresh Louisiana strawberry juice are added, giving the beer a pleasant sweet taste and aroma, as well as a rich golden color and slight cloudiness. Strawgator is a great dessert beer. It pairs well with fruit, dessert or sorberts. It is also excellent with chocolate dishes and cheeses such as St. Andre, Mascarpone and Brie.

ABITA ALPHAGATOR , 8.5% ABV, 35 IBU

AlphaGator is an Imperial IPA that is unquestionably at the top of the chain. Lurking around with a cloudy appearance, this brew asserts big hop flavors of tropical and citrus fruits. With a substantial alcohol content, this reptile reigns supreme and packs a big bite.

ABITA FRENCH TOAST STOUT, 8% ABV, 15 IBU

With creamy notes of maple syrup, cinnamon, vanilla and nutmeg, this Stout will have you craving breakfast for dinner. A decadent brew inspired by a morning favorite; Abita French Toast Stout has a smooth & subtle sweetness perfect for any time of day. French Toast Stout is part of the limited series, so grab it when you see it! Look out for the next beers in this lineup: PB & Jams, Ride Share Triple IPA, and Fluffernutter.

Abita Root Beer is made with a hot mix process using spring water, herbs, vanilla and yucca (which creates foam). Unlike most soft drink manufacturers, Abita sweetens its root beer with pure Louisiana cane sugar. The resulting taste is reminiscent of soft drinks made in the 1940s and 1950s, before bottlers turned to corn sugar and fructose. Some soft drink makers add caffeine to their product, but Abita is naturally caffeine-free. Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream for an old-fashioned root beer float. Abita Root Beer can also be used in cooking to create delicious glazes and sauces as well as cakes and other desserts, or you can keep it simple – just pour it into a frosty mug and slurp loudly through a straw.

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ABV: Alcohol by Volume, IBU: International Bitterness Units

by Yaa Gyasi

layers of the story show the magnitude of political decisions and the impact affecting generations. Each chapter reads like its own vignette or short story; woven together, the quilt of familial existence comes into focus. This novel is impossible to read without experiencing a flood of emotions.

In this sweeping epic that spans almost three centuries, Yaa Gyasi delivers a powerful punch to colonial history and the transatlantic slave trade. Two sisters are born with no knowledge of one another in opposing villages. While Effia is married off to a white colonial soldier, Esi is imprisoned and relegated to the Gold Coast Atlantic slave trade, and monetized in America’s chattel slavery institution. In alternating chapters, the story follows their descendants in Ghana and America. Gyasi lures readers into an intense meditation on the binds of family and the horrors of history. She compels readers to complicate foremothers and forefathers, the distant relatives whose choices and circumstances so greatly impact our current lives.

The opening pages feature two parallel family trees. As each chapter introduces a tangential plot line, I kept referring back to the tree for reference. While it may sound confusing, the novel flows quite seamlessly between the sisters’ families. Gyasi’s visuals of the historical African landscape and the battles between Asante and Fante tribes depict a transatlantic history we rarely see with such clarity. The integral

I sped through this novel, relaxing into Gyasi’s command of prose and storytelling. The novel lacks predictability, much like life itself. Though fictional, each character’s story beats with historical relevance and brings the importance of ancestry into full view. Gyasi refuses the convenience of resolve, often retaining the fate of one character to the background of another. I left each chapter hesitantly, wanting to climb back into each plot line for a bit longer. As a woman, witnessing the lack of female agency is harrowing, especially when it happens on our own continent. The girls exist as currency to the patriarchal system both in Ghana and America. Whether owned by white masters in America or married to tribe leaders for the sole purpose of procreation, their lives are not their own. Gyasi intensely focuses on the historical human experience through the lives of women, lacking in agency but brimming with determination. Homegoing is Gyasi’s debut novel and won numerous awards after its publication in 2016.

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

by James Hannaham

“A story might help you get through your life, but it doesn’t literally keep you alive -- if anything, most often people who have power turn their story into a brick wall keeping out somebody else’s truth, so that they can continue the life they believe themselves to be leading, trying somehow to preserve the idea that they’re good people in their small lives, despite their involvement, however indirect, with bigger evils.”

The title of James Hannaham’s novel sounds like the name of a corporation, a greedy capitalist outfit that maintains a stellar image while robbing its workers of fair pay, dignity, and leverage. And this assumption wouldn’t be far from the truth. As the horror novel opens, Eddie is driving furiously from nowhere Louisiana to Minnesota, struggling to maneuver the steering wheel as his hands have been severed from his body. When he finally reaches his aunt’s house and she recovers from the shock of his condition, Eddie learns to adapt to his new reality, concocting an apparatus that allows to move his nubs and make mechanical repairs. He markets himself as The Handyman Without Hands and morphs into a small-town celebrity. In the following chapters, Eddie’s backstory evolves with the force of tragedy and the continual onset of trauma. Through the voice of three characters, Hannaham unveils the demise of a family and the history of black violence in America.

The most interesting and telling narrator of the story is Scotty, aka Crack -the drug of choice. Scotty’s cool black vernacular tells the story of Darlene, Eddie’s mother, whose addiction after the murder of her husband is the root cause of the chaos that ensues. Having essentially lost two parents, Eddie comes of age in an environment not fit for human beings, and especially not for young boys. At Delicious Foods, Eddie learns the hard lessons of sacrifice, loss, abuse, and manual labor. This novel is not for the faint of heart. The plot is relentlessly heavy and Hannaham notably draws out tension and pain, forcing the reader to sit with hard truths. The plot parallels the history of slavery, showing the frameworks that supported the institution are still very much in place in America, working to protect the powerful and punish those who are not. The story is violent, frank, and unsettling - as is the history of the institution on which it so deliberately comments. Hannaham’s novel will leave you pondering what was real, what was fiction, and whether there is even a difference.

“Everybody black knows how to react to a tragedy. Just bring out a wheelbarrow full of the Same Old Anger, dump it all over the Usual Frustration, and water it with Somebody Oughtas. Then quietly set some globs of Genuine Awe in a circle around the mixture, but don’t call too much attention to that. Mention the Holy Spirit whenever possible.”

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE