February 5, 2026

Beer not, Southern craft brewers

History shows there’s still hope for sector

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Abita is a survivor of the South’s first modern craft beer era/ Photo by Eddie Welker via Flickr
Abita is a survivor of the South’s first modern craft beer era/ Photo by Eddie Welker via Flickr
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By Tom Acitelli
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By Tom Acitelli

In April 1984, a contractor named Rush Cumming and a trained anthropologist named Jim Patton filed incorporation papers with the State of Louisiana to start what they called the Abita Brewing Company in Abita Springs. 

The incorporation papers made Abita only the third craft brewery in the entire South, following launches in Texas and Virginia. (For that matter, Abita was one of only two breweries, period, in Louisiana—the other was the much older regional Dixie Brewing Company in New Orleans.) 

 
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