[here] Beer, Booze and Bars,
Issue: Sep 10, 2009
Happy Beerthday
Pump House Says Cheers for 10 Years and Hires New Brewer
by Craig Pinhey
It is hard to believe that Pump House Brewery is 10 years old. It seems like only yesterday when I was thrilled to hear about this new brewery opening, after I moved here from Ontario. They have come a long way too, since, turning from a brewpub to a full fledged microbrewery, selling beer in most of the provinces, winning Canadian Brewery of The Year, opening the Barnyard (the region’s only authentic Southern BBQ), planning canned beer for export, founding the Atlantic Beer Festival, and generally thriving in this relatively small market. Owners Shaun and Lilia Fraser have a lot to be proud of.
The Moncton micro celebrated their 10th anniversary recently, on September 3rd, inviting “#1″, their first ever customer, Moncton beer lover and punk legend Ray Auffrey, to tap their Anniversary Ale at 4pm, in memory of the first beer poured from the Orange Street location at 4 pm, September 3rd, 1999.
I couldn’t make it to the party, but I’m sure they partied like it was 1999, even though I doubt Prince drinks beer (how could he keep that petite figure?) I asked Auffrey how he liked the beer. “The 10th Anniversary Dunkel Weizen was dark in colour as expected and medium-bodied,” he remembers. “The flavour was definitely malty and was more roasted and smoky than expected. It threw some of my companions for a loop, but after a few pints and the initial shock gone, I quite enjoyed it and imbibed with pleasure.”
This is indeed a meaningful milestone for the business, and, coincidentally, this month marks another significant occasion for them: the hiring of a new brewer. With Greg Nash leaving for Nova Scotia, they needed another set of experienced hands to join the team of Andi Bieger, who handles the main brewery and bottling plant on Mill Road, and Glenn Kervin, who brews up all those crazy-good seasonals at the original brewpub location downtown on Orange Lane.
After a brief search, the Fraser’s hired Johannes Lux, a young German brewer, originally from Bitburg, who has worked at some very respected names in brewing in his career: Bitburger Brauerei, Brasserie de Luxembourg, Stiefelbräu brewpub in Saarbrücken/Germany, and Paulaner Brauhaus in Nanjing/China.
If Pump House finally decides to bottle their Weissebier, or make a premium Pils (PLEASE!) they have a good team in place. I say this because Bieger is also a German brewer. Although born in Ivory Coast, Africa, he worked at various German breweries, including Altöttinger Hellbräu (now defunct), Augustiner Bräu, Müllerbräu, and the famous Weissebier-producing König Ludwig Brauerei in Fürstenfeldbruck.
Bieger has been brewing at Pump House since 2007.
With this “German experienced” brewing squad, it leads to me to desire and expect premium bottled lager out of Pump House. I asked Bieger why so few craft breweries make real cold fermented, aged lager.
“North American micro breweries mostly don’t produce any bottom fermented beers,” says Bieger, “because they just don’t have the equipment for proper production.” From a technical standpoint, German lager brewing requires decoction mashing, where different stages at different temperatures are employed to take advantage of various enzymes, whereas micros usually do “one step infusion mashing.”
“Under extreme circumstances,” explains Bieger, “mashing-in at temperatures of 36°C is necessary, which cannot be achieved with the typical micro brewery brewhouse setup. The emphasizing of the different working temperatures for the enzymes is so easy, yet barely anybody in North America applies those principles.”
Besides this technique difference for lager, there is also a higher cost, both capital and operating. “Whereas ales are ready to be bottled and sold within two weeks (in some breweries even less),” offers Bieger, “and ferment at 18°C to 24°C, a bottom fermented beer requires a minimum of 4 to six weeks for maturation. As an example: the beers at Augustiner Bräu were in the cellars at 0°C to -1°C for a couple of months. Obviously that requires a lot of storage space and causes high cost for cooling.”
I kept pressing him about Weissbier (Weißbier in German). There is no local bottled German wheat beer, and it sure seems to be trendy these days.
“So far it’s only rumours,” answers Bieger. “If it is a “YES”, Johannes and I will certainly come up with something very yummy. We’re both thinking a Schneider, Paulaner or Karg style Weißbier. Unfiltered, with lots of yeast, amber colored, high CO2, fruity, with lots of banana and clove.”
New Brunswick’s beer lovers, including, I’m sure, #1 Ray Auffrey, will be waiting with open mouths for this, ready to say “Cheers for 10 years!”
Craig Pinhey thinks Weisse is nice. Visit him at www.frogspad.ca.
