Atlantic Canada Beer Festivals

A Sneak Peek at this Year’s Brewer’s Bash in Fredericton

Posted by acbbshawn on 2014-07-09
Posted in: Atlantic Canada Beer Festivals. Tagged: Brewer's Bash. Leave a Comment

bash

We’re only a few days away from this year’s Brewer’s Bash in Fredericton! Put on by Picaroons, the festival will be held this Saturday, July 12th from 11 am – 11 pm in downtown Fredericton at Officer’s Square. This is the second year for the outdoor event, and it promises to be at least as fantastic as last year! With about 60 breweries from across Canada present (about 1/3 of which are from Atlantic Canada), there will be over 300 beers pouring. With many of these beers typically not available in our region, the Bash offers a great excuse to get outside and enjoy a lot of new craft beer!

For entertainment, the outdoor festival will have a DJ spinning music throughout the day, and live tunes in the evening. Both Cyndi Cain and The Chronos Band will be performing; unfortunately, the also-scheduled Zeus has had to cancel due to medical issues. Luckily, Cyndi Cain and Chronos have agreed to extend their sets, so there’ll still be plenty of live music for your listening pleasure!

Ticket-holders can come and go as they please, but there will still be food options available at the festival. Milda’s will be serving up some wood-fired pizzas, and reLiSH will have several burgers available for purchase, including The Brewster, with lager onion chutney, cheddar cheese, and hickory sticks.

As for the beers and ciders that will be available, well, most breweries are keeping it a secret until the day of the festival. But, we’ve spoken with most of the brewers at the Atlantic Canadian breweries that are attending, and managed to get a sneak peek from many of them! Check out the list below:

• New Brunswick:

– Acadie-Broue – Kiebitz coti (Berliner Weisse), Zirable (“pseudo-Lambic”, or American Sour… more on this beer here)

– Big Axe – ShakesBeer Chocolate Oatmeal Stout, Simon Saaz Summer Ale

– Big Tide – Three Pages to the Wind (a “Whiskey Pale Ale”), Tidal Wave Double IPA

– Brasseurs du Petit-Sault – Tante Blanche (Witbier)

– Celtic Knot – Dubh Loki Black IPA, For Shore (Session IPA)

– Grimross – Cheval D’Or, Ben’s Country Cousin, and a new, currently unnamed beer

– Hammond River Brewing – Hop Flash IPA, Hawaiian Pale Ale

– Picaroons – You’ll have to wait until the festival to find out, but it sounds like they have some new and interesting brews planned!

– Pump House – Blueberry Ale, Premium Pilsner, IPA

– Red Rover – Spring Brew, Summer Brew; also, look for a collaboration with Picaroons!

Unfortunately, Railcar Brewing will not be attending, as previously reported. Due to problems brought on by Hurricane Arthur, their recent batch of beer will not be ready in time. We look forward to trying their beer in the very near future!

Also unfortunately, Shiretown has been forced to pull out of the festival. Hopefully we see them at the next festival!

• Newfoundland:

– Quidi Vidi – TBA

• Nova Scotia:

– Big Spruce – Cereal Killer Oatmeal Stout, You Spin Me White Round (White IPA)

– Boxing Rock – Crafty Jack, Temptation Red, Hunky Dory Pale Ale, The Vicar’s Cross Double IPA (bronze medal winner at this year’s Canadian Brewing Awards)

– Garrison – Nut Brown, Nit Wit, Raspberry Wheat Ale, IPA, Tall Ship Amber; they will also be pouring Glutenberg American Pale Ale, Red and Blonde.

– Hell Bay – English Ale, Wee Heavy

– Propeller – IPA, Extra Special Better, Bohemian Style Pilsner, Revolution Russian Imperial Stout, Double IPA

– Uncle Leo’s – Red, IPA, Smoked Porter

• Prince Edward Island:

– PEI Brewing Co. – Blueberry Ale, Landing Day Lager, Vic Park Pale Ale

Looks like plenty of great options, with lots of seasonals and one-offs joining regular-line-up beers! Like last year, the event sold out quickly (despite 500 more tickets being sold this year)… however, they announced this morning that they are holding another ticket giveaway contest later today. Keep an eye on their Facebook page for your chance to win! We hope to see you at the festival on Saturday!

Details on the 2014 Atlantic Beer Festival

Posted by acbbshawn on 2014-05-15
Posted in: Atlantic Canada Beer Festivals. Tagged: 2014 Atlantic Beer Festival. 1 comment

Atlantic Beer Festi

The 9th Annual Atlantic Beer Festival, Atlantic Canada’s longest-running beer fest, will be held this year on Saturday, May 31st. Taking place at the Moncton Coliseum, there will be two sessions: one in the afternoon from 2:30 pm – 5:00 pm, and an evening session from 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm. Tickets are $49 each (tax included), and can be purchased directly at the Pump House Brewery or the Moncton Coliseum, and online at tickets.moncton.ca. Note that evening session tickets are sold out through the Coliseum, but a few more have been released and are available at the Pump House only.

For this year’s event, a limited number of 24 VIP tickets were made available through the Moncton Beer League, in conjunction with the festival. These $65 tickets, which are now sold out, include pre-fest snacks at the Pump House, followed by a limousine ride to the festival, where ticket-holders will be allowed to skip the line via a VIP entrance; a limo ride back to the Pump House after the fest is also included. All proceeds from these tickets will be donated to a local charity. As well, a team of volunteers from another local charity will be present to assist in pouring beer samples; a donation from the Atlantic Beer Festival will be made on their behalf.

Sponsored by the ANBL and City of Moncton, this year’s festival will offer their largest selection of beer yet, with over 160 beers from more than 35 breweries/importers. While the full brewery/beer list has not been released yet (look for that to be posted May 24th), we have confirmation on a few of the breweries that will be attending, including several from Quebec (Microbrasserie Charlevoix, Le Naufrageur, and returning favorite Le Trou du Diable, with a whopping 10 different beers!), Muskoka Brewery from Ontario, and, of course, some Atlantic Canadian breweries such as Pump House and The PEI Brewing Co. Attendees can also look forward to sampling 10-12 different brands from American breweries (such as Wachusett Brewing Company and Cisco Brewers, just to mention a couple), thanks to the participation of an importer from Massachusetts. That’s a lot of beer to sample that we can’t normally get in our area! Most breweries will have representatives on hand to answer questions about their beers.

In addition to all that beer, there will be several food options. Like last year, a BBQ/smoking station will be set up to provide pretzels, sausages, and pulled pork sandwiches for sale. As well, the St. James’ Gate will have a food booth at the festival. Water and Pepsi products will also be available for no extra charge. Live entertainment will be present throughout the festival; both Carey Beck and the 60 LPs will be performing at both the afternoon and evening sessions.

This year, the Atlantic Beer Festival and ANBL are providing free transportation in the form of buses after each session; patrons will be able to travel to various locations in the Greater Moncton Area. As they’ve made clear, this is more of a quality over quantity type of event, and they wish to ensure that safety is the number one priority for everyone involved.

The festival is approaching fast, so if you haven’t bought your ticket yet, don’t wait much longer! There’s still plenty of afternoon tickets available… keep in mind that at least one beer will be making an appearance solely at this session (no, we don’t know which one(s), yet!); with the slightly more-relaxed atmosphere, it’s a great option. We’ll be having a contest on Twitter and Facebook to give away 2 afternoon session tickets… tune in to our Friday Wrap-Up tomorrow for more details!

Update May 16: We’re giving away two tickets for the afternoon session (2:30 – 5:00 pm)! Hop on Twitter and send us a note that you’d like to win the tickets (something like: Hey @ACBeerBlogger! I want to win tickets to #ABF2014! http://wp.me/p23UN6-1gZ). One entry per person; we’ll randomly pick the winner before 11:59PM Thursday, May 22nd, and announce their name in next Friday’s post. Good luck!

2014 Fredericton Craft Beer Festival Wrap-Up

Posted by acbbshawn on 2014-03-13
Posted in: Atlantic Canada Beer Festivals. Tagged: 2014 Fredericton Craft Beer Festival. Leave a Comment
Festival

Let the beer tasting begin!

Along with about 998 other people, acbbchris and acbbshawn were lucky enough to be in attendance at the 2nd Annual Fredericton Craft Beer Festival at the Fredericton Convention Centre last Saturday, March 8th. With a bigger venue, more ticket-holders, and more brewers and beers than last year, the event was an even bigger success this time around!

Beer2

To recap, there were 700 “regular” admission ticket-holders, who were allowed unlimited 2 oz samples of the beers available, from 7:30 pm to 10 pm. The 250 VIP ticket-holders were allowed entry an hour earlier, beginning at 6:30 pm. On top of this, there were also about 50 “Women’s VIP” tickets sold; ladies with these tickets had some beer education starting at 6 pm, and they also received a larger keepsake glass.

Naufrageur

With a combined 28 brewers and distributors at this year’s festival, there were approximately 150 beers pouring on Saturday night. There were lots of standout beers being served! Representing the Atlantic provinces were Bad Apple Brewhouse, Barnone Brewing, Big Spruce, Big Tide, Boxing Rock, Garrison Brewing, Grimross, Moosehead, North Brewing, PEI Brewing Co., Picaroons, Pump House, Red Rover, Shiretown, Sunset Heights Meadery, and Uncle Leo’s. That’s NINE more Atlantic Canada breweries than last year! Goes to show how much the beer world is changing in our region!

BAB

As for food, there were free samples of Magzy’s Kettle Korn, salmon from Miramichi Smoked Salmon, and chili from Good Apple Culinary (using all local products, including Picaroons beer, beef from Yerxa’s Meats, and beans from VanDine’s in Red Bridge).

Beer

All proceeds from the festival will be donated to Team Diabetes (who also had a booth at the fest, selling tickets for their Beer for a Year drawing… more details on that in last Friday’s post). Approximately $14,000 was raised for this well-deserving charity, along with an additional $1200 from the Beer for a Year ticket sales!

Steve

Steve Dixon of Grimross Brewing

We had a great time at the festival, and were very impressed with the improving quality of beer brewed and available in our region. Stay tuned later in the week, when the crowd-selected Best of the Festival will be announced! Next year’s festival has already been determined to be on Saturday, March 7th, 2015.

And don’t forget, there’s less than a month (April 5th) until the Saint John Beer Festival… tickets are selling fast, so don’t wait much longer to get yours! We’ll have more details on the SJBF soon.

Special thanks to Ahmed Dassouki for providing all of the pictures in this post. You can check out the full album of FCBF 2014 pictures at his Facebook page! Also, head to this link for a special news broadcast on the festival from CTV News.