We recently went on a 2 week vacation to Fredericton and the Maritimes. Why would you do this, you ask? Well, because we have great friends who live in Fredericton whom we’d been promising to visit for some time, and now was finally the time. We had an absolute blast, but unfortunately for you I’m not here to write about any of that. I’m here to write about the beer.
As is my new vacation hobby, I was trying to fit in as many local craft brews as I could. Fredericton alone has a good number of breweries, and when you add in the rest of the Maritimes, you can tell that beer is a passion of the area.
About Me
Re-reading my Hawai’i blog about beer, I think maybe one of the problems is me. I just don’t like a lot of beers, and in order for me to claim that I like it, it usually has to be either quite sweet or quite interesting. I love interesting. But at present, I don’t have enough knowledge or experience to discern whether this particular Red Ale is better than the next – I just know that I’m not a fan of Red Ale’s in general.
Worse, I think I pick and sometimes like beers based on their graphic design. Call it a personal failing, or call it a peculiarity, but I appreciate a good label and a good logo.
New Brunswick
Big Axe
Big Axe is a brewery in Nackawic, New Brunswick, which is apparently the home of the worlds largest axe. I guess when you’re a small town, you need something. Despite it’s silly origins, the name works and their logo and graphic design are eye catching, which is why I ended up buying 3 of their beers from the liquor store.
Lizzie Border Red American Amber Ale
This one was a little more of a red ale, and in hindsight it even said that on the label. I don’t like red ales because the coppery flavour tends to be just a little bit bitter for what I’m looking for. Unfortunately, I tend to believe that I like amber ales, so I bought 2 of them and regretted it.
Seaberry Sour
I’ve grown to really like sour beers, I think because the brewers have tended to take more risks with them and you can end up with some great fruit flavours without having a “fruit” beer. This was really quite sour, and had a strong punch to it. I really liked it!
Blonde Hatchet Ale
This one a little hoppy for what I prefer. However, it was not as hoppy as some of the local breweries that love their hops, so it was still within the realm of “yeah, I’ll finish that”.
Pumphouse – Blueberry Ale
Pumphouse is a brewery in Moncton, roughly 2 hours drive from Fredericton. I only tried one of their beers, even though my friend bought a sampler pack. I was trying to find one last new beer on the last night, and grabbed this one. I love blueberries and I think they make great beer. I feel like you can go really deep into the blueberry hole with beer and still come out with something that tastes like beer, but also strongly of blueberries. (unlike something like a strawberry where you tend to end up with a strawberry drink).
Graystone – Into the Woods Brown Ale
Graystone is a Fredericton local brewery, and the only beer I tried that was from where we were primarily staying! Brown ale sounds more like my style. Untappd says it has “chocolate and caramel flavo[u]rs” and I’m sure they think it does, but I only tasted a regular English brown ale. Nothing overly special, except that I have a deep love of the full-can landscape art.
Nova Scotia
Garrison – Nut Brown
Garrison is a Halifax brewery, and I had this beer in a little roadside eatery in a little town we were passing through when we needed to eat. This Nut Brown had a nice but not overpowering malted taste, very easy to drink with just enough flavour to be good. It had some bitterness that I didn’t love, but it wasn’t to much.
Propeller – ESB
Propeller beer seemed to be everywhere we went, so much so that I think I had an assumption somewhere in my mind that it might be like our local Granville Island Brewing — local, but huge, so maybe not like “craft” craft beer. I eventually tried their ESB, and it was quite good. It tasted like it had more head than I was used to, or like a foaminess to it that was a little odd. Even though I claim to not love bitterness above, I keep trying ESBs (which literally claim to be “bitter”) because I had a New Westminster local Steel & Oak ESB that was just phenomenal a few years back and I keep trying the style to get that taste back. This wasn’t it.
Shipwright – Fruitea Weissbier
Lastly, the Shipwright. We stayed in Lunenberg for a night which is a quaint little town that knows it’s quaint. It is seaside and has a lighthouse nearby and a famous sailing ship and all the buildings are a variety of different colours, and it was lovely. They had one brewery which I had to stop in and visit.
They seemed to prefer hoppier beers, as of the 2 others on tap there was an IPA and another hoppy beer I don’t recall much about. The third option was a wheat beer which is a style I don’t generally mind.
This is officially my second favourite beer in the world.
It was different and cool and I felt like you could taste tannins from one of the teas in it and it was fruity, but not overly fruity and light and wheat-beery and man I bought 4 “crowlers” (32oz cans) on the spot after trying it. I shared one with the friend we were staying with, left one with him and bought 2 home.
(my first favourite beer is the Red Rice Ale I had in Hawai’i…)
Anyway, that’s my survey of beer in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. We went through Prince Edward Island, but didn’t stop long enough to enjoy any beer they might have had.