Photo by Molly McNeal.
Bayou Sara
Brewing good beer takes time. How much time? According to Steve McKinney, co-founder of St. Francisville’s Bayou Sara Brewing Company, nine years is about right. Steve and Amanda McKinney, with partners Doug and Abby Cochran and friends John Kaspar and Jim and Kelly Flavin, began to research launching a craft brewery back in 2016. Serious planning got underway in 2018, and ever since renovations to the old Ford dealership on the corner of Commerce and Ferdinand streets began in June 2024, St. Francisville beer lovers have been tracking progress with obsessive interest. So, on October 24, when the taps at Bayou Sara Brewing Co. finally started flowing, there was great rejoicing.
The doors opened on a high-ceilinged 7,200 square-foot space divided between the brewhouse (towering stainless-steel kettles and fermentation vessels, a long bar with a fourteen-tap rail, picnic table seating, big fans), and a sunlit, front-of-house restaurant with floor-to-ceiling windows, casual and table seating and a long, L-shaped bar. McKinney bought much of the brewing equipment from Mandeville’s Old Rail Brewing Company, with additional components sourced from New Orleans’s Urban South Brewery and Bossier City’s Red River Brewing Company. The beer recipes, though, are all his own. Bayou Sara opened with five beers on tap: a west coast IPA, a New Zealand pilsner, an easy-drinking blonde ale, a classic American amber ale; and a single-hopped Citra American pale ale, which was full-bodied and refreshing, with a tight, creamy head and just enough pleasing bitterness to offset its citrusy, tropical notes. In the months to come, McKinney will fill out Bayou Sara’s fourteen-tap rail with a full complement, ranging from easy-drinking blondes to hearty porters and seasonal brews, and his personal favorite: a crisp black lager brewed with chocolate and black patent malts, then cold-fermented for forty-five days. “It’s a very black beer,” McKinney noted, “but if you weren’t looking at it, you wouldn’t know because it’s light and crisp, with background notes of coffee and chocolate. That low-temp, long fermentation gives it a lighter, crisper mouthfeel.”
Like we said, good things take time. But while Bayou Sara’s fans await Steve’s Black Lager, there’s plenty to keep them occupied, including five excellent beers already on tap, a full bar, and a casually approachable pub menu that extends to taco and slider flights, smashburgers made with bacon and pimento, a grilled cheese with pulled pork, and salad options from Asian chicken, to Caesar, to blue cheese wedge. Bottoms up at 11943 Ferdinand Street.
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