It wasn’t long ago that if you wanted to take in the craft beer scene in Louisiana, you could make a day trip to Abita Springs, tour the brewery, try some beer and be home by dinnertime. The state’s beer culture was, to put it mildly, pretty lame, especially when places like Portland, Ore., and Asheville, N.C., were laying claim to the title “Beer City USA.”

But things are changing in the Pelican State, which is now home to six breweries and a burgeoning craft beer movement that has taken off in the last year and a half.

To get a sense of where they are and where they’re going, my wife, Amy, my dog, Gumbeaux, and I loaded up the Monte Carlo and headed west to talk to the people that are helping the craft beer scene take root in a state that has long been a bastion of fizzy, yellow “huge ass beer to go,” as proudly advertised on Bourbon Street.

What we found as we traveled from Cajun Country to Baton Rouge and on to New Orleans over the course of a chilly weekend in January was a cross-section of the craft beer movement, from infancy to national prominence.

Bayou Teche Brewing Co. — Arnaudville, La.

Friday, Jan. 14, 10:30 a.m.

Copper-clad tanks fill the spacious, nearly 100-year-old wooden building. After stints as a gym and a hardware store, it’s now part brewery, part museum, with a strong emphasis on Heiner Brau’s German heritage.

Owner and brewmaster Henryk Orlik is one of just a few German brewmasters in the United States, and all of the beers in the Heiner Brau line are brewed to the specifications of the German Purity Law, which states only barley malt, hops, yeast and water can be used in the brewing process.

At just five years old, Heiner Brau is the state’s second-oldest brewery, and, Broussard tells us, it’s seen amazing growth in just the past two years.

“When I started here two years ago, we were distributed by a guy in a van. That van that’s parked outside was used to deliver all our beer, everywhere, and now, we’re distributed all over. It’s pretty amazing.”

That growth, he tells us, started when Anheuser Busch was bought by the Belgian conglomerate InBev in 2008. Attitudes changed after that, he said, and Budweiser distributors started carrying more craft beer lines, including Heiner Brau, which, they discovered, was easily mistaken for an import.

So last year, Heiner Brau launched Covington Brewhouse, a new line of beers that emphasizes that the beer is brewed locally. Since then, sales have taken off, and plans for a bigger brewery are in the works.

“The idea of the whole brewery has changed so much since I’ve been here,” Broussard tells us. “The original idea of the brewery was to make one kind of beer and just it’d be a German style beer, they’d put it in cans and kegs and people enjoy this German beer. ... [N]ow we’re making 10 or 12 different kinds of beers in this little bitty place. So who knows what the future holds, but I do know they’re looking toward bigger and better things. We’re outgrowing this place.”

Abita Brewing Co. — Abita Springs, La.

11:45 a.m.

Less than three miles away from Heiner Brau, along La. 36, sits the massive Abita brewery, which offers public tours every Wednesday through Saturday.

We’re here for the noon tour, and already there are nearly 50 other Abita fans with us in the courtyard of the fancy tasting room waiting to do the same.

At Abita, it’s more party than tour. Visitors get their ID checked (children are welcome, but they have to drink root beer), wristbands are issued, they give you a cup and, when the doors open at noon, it’s all-you-can-drink from the 14 taps that line the self-serve bar in the tasting room.

The crowd is a mix of tourists, families and students from Tulane and Loyola looking to fill up on free beer, which they do with the encouragement of the employees running the tour.

After a couple of short videos, one touting the brewery’s green initiatives and another which explains the brewing process at Abita, the crowd is gathered up and brought on a brief, seven-minute walking tour of the cellars and brewhouse.

It’s here, amid the towering 300- and 400-barrel fermenters, that the 25-year-old brewery’s size really comes into scope. Last year, they produced 109,000 barrels of beer; sales were 21.5 percent times greater than in 2009. They’ve got a kettle so advanced they simply call it “Merlin,” and new 400 barrel fermenters that aren’t even online yet. A faster, more efficient packaging system will be installed sometime this year.

Abita’s clearly in another league than the other breweries in the state, and nearly all of the brewers we spoke with talked about them with reverence. In 1986, when the brewery started in what is now the Abita Brew Pub, they were trailblazers, working to change the palates of beer drinkers long before others would try. Now, they are the largest craft brewery in the southeast and the 17th largest in the United States. Abita’s beers are distributed in 42 of those states, plus Puerto Rico.

We ask a few of our tourmates how many Louisiana breweries they can name, and the consensus is two — Abita and NOLA, our final brewery on this short, beer-filled weekend adventure. It’s a sign that while yes, things are changing in Louisiana’s beer scene, there’s still a long way to go.

NOLA Brewing Co. — New Orleans

4:30 p.m.

New Orleans. It was once the brewing capital of the South, home to dozens of breweries before prohibition in 1920 killed most of them off. Those that survived those 12 beer-less years would ultimately suffer a long, drawn-out demise at the hands of the country’s biggest breweries. Years after the Jax Brewery became a shopping mall and the sign atop the shuttered Falstaff brewery ceased to report the weather, the levee failure after Hurricane Katrina flooded Dixie, leaving New Orleans without a single brewery.

As the city struggled to rebuild, Kirk Coco wondered what he could do to help. To the Navy man, who was in San Diego at the time, the answer was simple: Build a local brewery and stress that local brand.

He teamed up with former Dixie brewer Peter Caddoo, and, in March 2009, New Orleans-produced beer was again flowing from taps in the Crescent City. Just two years later, NOLA beers can be found on tap as far east as Pensacola.

We arrive at the brewery, which is located in a former scrap metal warehouse along Tchoupitoulas Street, and are joined by a group of writers from Southern Brew News. The cavernous space is filled with the sound of Caddoo’s electric guitar bouncing off the cinderblock walls, and while the night first takes on the feel of a media event, it quickly becomes a party for the dozen or so guests who are there to see the operation.

“It’s amazing how often these parties break out,” Coco tells us.

It is New Orleans, after all, home to the spontaneous party, and NOLA embodies that spirit with pride. When the brewers want to know which of their beers pairs best with king cake, they throw a party. When they release a new seasonal beer, they throw a party. And each of those seasonals pays homage to New Orleans. Beer names like Hurricane Saison, 7th Street Wheat, Irish Channel Stout and Flambeau Red — these are all significant names to proud New Orleanians, and tapping into that local pride is paying off for the young brewery.

In two years, Coco tells us, there’s been an amazing shift in the tastes of beer-drinkers in the city.

“We’ve always done a good import business on beers,” he says, “but craft beer has never been a big push. ... Now that I think we’ve managed to get Brooklyn and Stone and Shmaltz and some other breweries in here, people are saying, ‘Oh my God, there is an unbelievable amount of choices out there.’”

Nowhere in the city are those choices more evident than at the Avenue Pub, where we finish our weekend over a few Belgian beers.

Throughout our trip, the Avenue Pub — and its owner, Polly Watts, in particular — has been referenced over and over again as a major force behind the craft beer renaissance. “If there was a Gulf Coast beer hall of fame, Polly would be the first one inducted,” quipped Godley during our visit to Parish.

One look at the tap selection affirms that reputation; in just 18 months, Watts has transformed the 24/7 dive on St. Charles Avenue into the premiere beer bar in the state. She prides herself on rare Belgians and one-offs from breweries like Stone and Brooklyn, but her dedication to local beer is as yet unmatched; weekly casks of dry-hopped NOLA Blonde or vanilla-infused Abita Turbodog are often on the Pub’s schedule, and a number of NOLA seasonals have made their debut there.

“I dare you to find a better beer bar in town,” says Jeremy Labadie, aka “The Beer Buddha,” who writes a popular blog about beer in New Orleans. “There isn’t one.”

He’s been watching the Louisiana beer scene for years, and he credits places like the Avenue Pub for helping foster the craft beer movement. But, he notes, things wouldn’t have taken off without the determination of the state’s breweries.

“That’s the thing,” he tells us, “is that you’re gonna tell us no, and that’s great, but we’re going to do it anyway.”

Dan Murphy is a page designer and the resident beer nut at the Press-Register. He loves to talk beer, so feel free to e-mail him or hound him on Twitter.