Like a head of pilsner foam rising over the mug, Faubourg Brewing Co. is starting to build steam.
The official rollout is now underway for Faubourg as the new brand for the former Dixie Beer. The first beers brewed under that name are flowing at Faubourg's taproom in New Orleans East, where local bands perform in the beer garden each weekend and taproom staff guide visitors through the new varieties.
That beer began shipping in kegs from the brewery last Friday and should be in New Orleans-area restaurants and bars and ready to serve this week. Canned and bottled beer under the Faubourg name will follow later this spring, with distribution slated for May.
The changes go beyond the name and branding. The beers now shipping out with the Faubourg label are different too.
A line up of beers from Faubourg Brewing Co., formerly Dixie Beer, including Blackened Voodoo, Golden Cypress wheat beer, Westwego IPA and Dat'suma IPA with satsuma.
But to Faubourg general manager Jim Birch, the task at hand is the same as it was before the name change — to introduce a New Orleans-made beer that can compete with the global brands that dominate the local beer market.
"Most of the beer people drink in New Orleans is not made in New Orleans," Birch said. "We have a beautiful new brewery that’s designed to make a lot of New Orleans beer and create more local jobs."
Faubourg owner Gayle Benson, owner of the Saints and Pelicans franchises, made the call to “retire” the Dixie name over the summer, recasting the city’s oldest beer company just months after it had marked its return to New Orleans with a gleaming new brewery.
Staff photo by Ian McNulty - The facility for Faubourg Brewing, formerly Dixie Beer, in New Orleans East opens to a large beer garden and landscaped grounds.
That move came as the United States was convulsed with outcry over racial injustice. Many symbols tied to the era of slavery were toppled. Dixie Beer goes back to 1907, but the term’s association with the Confederacy led to a reappraisal of its future with the New Orleans brewery.
In November, the company revealed that its new name would be Faubourg, calling it "a tribute to the diverse neighborhoods of New Orleans," many of which were called faubourgs through the city’s history.
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More quietly, Birch and his brewing team have been working for months to change up the actual beer they produce under the new name.
Earlier in March, signs and merchandise bearing the Dixie name were hauled out, and new versions for Faubourg were brought in. The taproom also switched over the beers it pours, giving a preview of the brews now making their way into the market.
That includes a reformulated flagship lager and the company's steadfast Blackened Voodoo, a dark lager that had been a successful brew for Dixie for decades. Joining them are a wheat ale called Golden Cypress, a West Coast-style IPA called Westwego and an IPA with satsuma dubbed Dat’Suma.
Changing the way this company made beer was a prime directive for Birch and his brewers long before the name change.
Dixie Beer was once a mainstay of the local market, one of the breweries that successfully emerged from Prohibition and became a standard for New Orleans beer drinkers through generations.
But by the time Gayle Benson and her (now late) husband Tom Benson acquired the majority of Dixie in 2017 the beer’s luster had long since faded. The appeal was mostly in vestiges of its local connection, even though production had moved out of state in the years after Hurricane Katrina.
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When it returned to New Orleans, the company joined a market that has cultivated many small local breweries and also gained broader access to beer brands from elsewhere. Birch and his brewers were not banking on nostalgia to win over customers. The first line of beers they produced here, as Dixie, brought a range of craft beer styles, the sort of suds that beer lovers look for when they visit a taproom.
Relaunching as Faubourg, the evolution of their beer took another step.
Staff photo by Ian McNulty - The flagship beer at Faubourg Brewing is a pilsner-style lager, based on a German standard for readily quaffable brews.
Consider the flagship lager, the beer most associated with the name Dixie through the ups and downs of the brewery's history. This new beer is a pilsner-style lager, a bright, clean-tasting beer following a traditional German lager style (the rice Dixie once used has been replaced with barley).
It is a readily quaffable beer (alcohol content weighs in at a familiar 4.8%). This is the beer Faubourg expects to compete with the global brands like Budweiser and Miller, and it drinks like a Pilsner Urquell or a Stella Artois.
Staff photo by Ian McNulty - Cans for Faubourg Brewing, formerly Dixie Beer, wait to be filled at the New Orleans East facility.
The only change to Blackened Voodoo is that it’s now called Faubourg Blackened Voodoo. The recipe is the same as the version first introduced in 1992, giving a dark, nutty flavor with a smooth finish.
Golden Cypress, the wheat ale, is a cloudy, soft-edged beer, refreshing and also a bit creamy tasting, with citrus and a seam of coriander spice laced through it, making it the most intricate and layered of the new Faubourg beers.
As an IPA, the Dat’suma is a more potent beer (7.2% abv, compared to 5.2% for Golden Cypress and 5.5% for Blackened Voodoo) with a strong flavor of citrus. This is a thicker, heartier beer with a mouthfeel you can practically chew. The Westwego, also an IPA, is the strongest of the line at 8%; it gives a heavy dose of hops with their trademark bitter finish through a mix of beery and floral flavors.
3501 Jourdan Road, New Orleans
Taproom and beer garden hours:
Mon.-Thu.: 2 p.m.-6 p.m., Fri., Sat.: 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun: 11 a.m.-8 p.m.
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New brews from Faubourg start replacing Dixie Beer; see fresh labels, new beers - NOLA.com
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