The Courtyard Brewery
Three historical recreations pour here at once: an 1880s London porter, a 1915 mild and a 1930s interwar stout, next to a Nelson and Riwaka IPA.1
Why go
Scott Wood spent his twenties dragging Miller stacks around San Diego for a wholesaler and did not care about the beer for most of a decade.2 He opened Courtyard in 2014 with his wife Lindsay Hellwig, in a city that ran on cocktails.3 Good Beer Hunting called it the first of its kind in NoLa.
2 The historic beers are the reason to make the trip now. A pastry stout called Juanita's Chocolate Gold runs marshmallow, raw sugar and Ecuadorian cacao on the same board.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: whichever historic beer is pouring. The 1880s London porter and the 1915 mild are the two that are hard to find anywhere else.1
- Order: a crowler on the way out if something is going fast.1
- Avoid: planning a beer off the website. The brewery's own warning:
Taplist posted here is not 100% accurate, as it is not updated as frequently as the list in the taproom!
1
What locals & experts say
- Scott Wood, to Good Beer Hunting, 20 September 2017:
We've been getting an increasing number of beer geeks. We hear we're the number one or two spot for them. It's Avenue Pub and us.
2 - Wood on the brewery, same piece:
We're just a tiny little neighborhood bar that makes beer.
2 - Nobody has written about the Camp Street taproom. Good Beer Hunting visited the earlier premises in 2017 and Gambit's interview ran before the brewery opened, so the beer pouring today is unjudged.
Good to know
- Timing: Monday to Thursday from 4pm, Friday to Sunday from 11am, closing
11/12ish
and12/1ish
respectively, in the brewery's own words.1 - Booking: walk in.
- Website: use the Square site. courtyardbrewery.com is a parked domain.
- Hygiene: not established. New Orleans publishes no inspection register this project reads.
Verdict
should-visit — The evidence that moves this above a neighborhood taproom is the board itself: three dated historical recreations pouring at once, an 1880s London porter, a 1915 mild and a 1930s interwar stout, which is a research project rather than a rotation. Scott Wood came out of San Diego beer distribution and opened the city's first brewery of its kind in 2014, and Good Beer Hunting quotes him being funny about how little he expected it to work. Against that, both pieces of writing I could reach are from 2017 or earlier and describe the previous premises, so nothing recent has judged the beer.