Food & Drink · Greater Fredericton

Picaroons Brewing Company is Fredericton's original craft brewery, brewing English-style ales under the Northampton Brewing Company name since the mid-1990s. Founder Sean Dunbar and partners launched the brewery as one of New Brunswick's craft pioneers; it ran out of cash in 1999 despite fast-growing sales, and Dunbar reopened it on his own in 2001. The comeback stuck. Picaroons won Brewery of the Year at the 2011 Canadian Brewing Awards and grew into one of the province's best-known beer brands. The name comes from a picaroon, a hooked hand tool from New Brunswick's logging days, and the branding leans into that provincial identity with the tagline "The Taste of New Brunswick." The year-round lineup includes Best Bitter, Irish Red, Blonde Ale, Yippee IPA, and Timber Hog Stout, several of them medal winners; Best Bitter took Canadian Brewing Awards gold twice and the seasonal Winter Warmer won gold at the World Beer Championships in Chicago. The beers are brewed with malted barley imported from England and Germany and whole hops rather than pellets, a traditionalist streak that sets the house style apart from hop-bomb contemporaries. You can find Picaroons on tap in bars and restaurants across New Brunswick and in provincial liquor stores, but the home base is the Roundhouse at 912 Union Street in Fredericton, a converted historic railway building with a taproom, kitchen, coffee shop, and retail Brewtique; a second location, the General Store, operates on Canterbury Street in Saint John. Tip: the Roundhouse is the place to work through the range, with flights available and the full lineup plus seasonals on tap in one riverside room.

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