There is another addition coming to the growing uptown Saint John beer scene.
The Loyalist City Brewing Company is opening a six-barrel brewery on Water Street.
Recently, the uptown area has seen the opening of the Picaroons general store on Canterbury Street and the announcement that Moosehead Breweries was hoping to secure an uptown location for their new small-batch brewery. Brew-pub and restaurant Big Tide Brewing has been brewing their beers on Princess Street since 2009.
Loyalist City Brewing Company brewmaster Mark McGraw says it was important for them to be uptown because their core market is uptown.
“It’s the people of Saint John, but uptown is where the people of Saint John spend their evenings and weekends when they go out for dinner or a beer,” says McGraw. “We want to be part of that and we want to be local.”
While they started looking at locations for their brewery, he tells us they walked around to a half dozen places in the uptown.
“The Water Street side is really vacant,” says McGraw. “And there was a cruise ship in that day and passengers were looking around at these vacant storefronts and I’m sure they were questioning why these areas weren’t occupied.”
They’re opening up the brewery in the historic Bank of New Brunswick building.
This is their first commercial location.
They’re hoping for a November launch date and their initial line-up of beer will include five different styles.
