Crooked Letter Brewing Co.

We stopped at the Mississippi welcome center to get a map.  The lady behind the counter was very helpful, loading us up with lots of literature on things to do in the area.  One of the booklets had the usual list of hotels, restaurants and attractions.  There was also a section on Breweries with 3 entries. One was Crooked Letter Brewing Co. in Ocean Springs, just a few miles away from our campground.  They do tours and tasting on Saturday only.  We didn't plan to be here on Saturday so I didn't give it much thought.  But, here we were, it was Saturday.  

Our only plan for the day was to do laundry so we figured we catch one of the tours after we finished.  We found Crooked Letter behind an open air restaurant and bar called The Crawfish House and Grill, and right next door to the brewery was... a Laundromat.  How convenient!  

Laundry took a little longer than planned and we thought we'd missed the 2pm tour, but it was just starting.  The tours are $10 (with their signature glass) and 6-6oz samples of beer.  They were out of glasses (which we didn't have room for in the camper anyway) so the price was $5 per person, what a great deal.

 

 We learned a little more about brewing beer: the importance of the water temperature; water characteristics and grain size (they grind their own).

The tour only took about 10 minutes.  Next was the important stuff, the beer tasting.  There were 4 choices, Crooked Heffy (a German style filtered yeast beer), Pumpkin Stout, Gipsy IPA and  Stabello (an Italian style lager). Joan and I both like stouts so she tried that first.  She liked it, but it was a little too stout for me so I tried the Stabello.  We liked 3 of the 4 beers, the IPA being our least favorite.

We met a lot of interesting people including a scientist off a marine research boat, a geographer, a meteorologist and even a fellow brewer from Iowa.  I’m afraid the names of those fine folks escaped me.  After the first few beers the old memory wasn’t operating at peek efficiency.  

Here's some pictures from the tap room...

 

After we closed down the tap room (4:00 in the afternoon) we gathered around a Slack Line for some acrobatic fun.  Even Joan got in on the action… with a little help form 1, 2, 3 of her new friends.

The anticipated rain started and we said our goodbys.  It was dinner time so we walked to The Crawfish House, right in front of the brewery, for a burger and fries.  Now, I know we’re going to get a lot of flack for not trying the crawfish but in our condition we just wanted to stick with more common food to soak up some of the alcohol.

What a great afternoon.  We got our laundry done, had a great time at Crooked Letter Brewery and a great burger at the Crawfish House.  All within a short walk...  If we were going to be in town next Saturday we’d probably do a repeat performance - laundry, beer and maybe a crawfish or two.

Coming soon, More from southern Mississippi.