New Brunswick was once one of the provinces with the fewest number of breweries in Canada. Now, the industry has exploded and the province has the highest number of breweries per capita. These are spread in all corners of the province and are brewing an increasingly diverse range of beer styles.
From English style ales and Euro-influenced lagers to monster Double IPAs and puckering sours, you can find it all in New Brunswick.
It used to be that New Brunswick only had one well-known brewery—Saint John’s rather large but still independent Moosehead—but that is changing rapidly due to the growth in the number of small breweries all around the province. New Brunswick is now an east-coast craft beer destination.
It’s easy to find great beer in New Brunswick, from the Quebec border and Acadian Peninsula to the Saint John River Valley and Greater Moncton. The capital, Fredericton, is a brewing hotbed, renowned by beer lovers from over the world.
How We Got Here
New Brunswick’s modern brewing industry can be illustrated by looking at Picaroons, one of the first craft breweries in Atlantic Canada, opening first as a brewpub in 1994 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Things were more difficult then, but they are absolutely flying now, with three locations around the province (Fredericton, St. Stephen and Saint John), and a wide range of brands, including styles that didn’t even exist when they opened over 25 years ago.
While the short lived Hanshaus in Dieppe was the first modern brewery in the late 1980s, it was Picaroons, and, in 1999, Pump House in Moncton, that really kickstarted the New Brunswick small brewery boom. And both are still going strong today. For what seemed the longest time they were the only small breweries. However, things started to really pick up around the turn of the next decade, with pioneering nanobrewery Acadie Broue in Moncton helping to change the way local government looked at small breweries.
Soon came other innovators like Big Tide (2009), Fils du Roy (2011), Hammond River (2013), Grimross (2013), Petit Sault (2014), Big Axe (2014), and Trailway (2014).
That list has grown much longer in the last 5 or 6 years, and now there are over 50 breweries operating, many with taprooms so they can serve their beer onsite, and almost all offering beer to go in Growlers, bottles and/or cans. It feels like there is always a new brewery in the stages of opening, and that almost every small town is willing to support one. Now that’s great news for everyone.
