New Owners Of Rothesay Brewery Plan To Add Taproom And More Products
ROTHESAY – A craft brewery in the Saint John area has new owners, and it’s getting some new products and a new taproom as a result.
Jon Chouinard and Tim Webber have purchased Long Bay Brewery, located at 82 Marr Road in Rothesay, taking over the business from Sean Doyle.
Doyle, who sold the brewery to pursue a slower pace of life, has spent the last six months teaching Chouinard and Webber Long Bay’s recipes and equipment.
“Sean Doyle is the best process brewer that I ever brewed with,” says Chouinard, who up until now was brewing his own beer on a much smaller scale. He was working on opening a microbrewery of his own before the opportunity to buy Long Bay came up.
“It was a great opportunity to get to work with Sean and I certainly learned a lot about the mechanical aspect of his system … He’s been great to work with and to learn from. The rest of the business has kind of been a whirlwind for us, jumping in with two feet”
Chouinard says the current lineup of Long Bay beer will remain the same, though they will be brewing up some new ones.
“Our intent is to not take anything away. It’s simply just to add more to the existing portfolio,” he says.
Some new beers customers can expect include a double IPA coming out late this fall and a new light beer for the spring.
They also plan to open a 25-person taproom at their location on Marr Road.
“We have the space beside the brewery, so it’s going to be an open-concept space looking into the brewery, all on the main level,” says Chouinard. “Then the intent is for the spring of next year to include the mezzanine space, so we will have a two-level taproom that is open to the brewery. It’s going to be quite a large space.”
In the taproom, customers will be able to taste beers the brewery is testing out. Chouinard says they want to experiment more with both sours and darker beers.
“We want to do a couple of different new sour beers every month and get feedback on what flavour profiles and combinations of different fruits and hops that we can use in those beers to see where people’s taste buds are [trending],” he says. “We’re also going to do a winter beer. We’ve had a lot of requests for both stouts and porters. The time is coming where that will be a good beer to have in our taproom over the winter months.”
All of Long Bay’s operations are in-house: the brewing, filling, labeling, sales, social media, accounting, and delivery.
“There’s no aspect we farm out at this point in time just because we’re trying to make sure we learn every aspect of the business, but also trying to keep our costs under control,” says Chouinard.
“[It’s] still a new company and we’re taking Long Bay in the next step of its progression with the taproom and expanding the brand, so we want to make sure we keep our fingers on [all aspects of the business] as long as we can.”
Chouinard says he and Webber’s vision as new owners is to expand Long Bay’s reach across the region. This includes getting into grocery stores and breaking into new markets.
“Our vision is to be able to spread the distribution network, get into more bars, and into the grocery store chains and eventually Nova Scotia,” he says. “We want to bring [our] quality products to as many corners of Atlantic Canada and we’ll see where the future brings after that.”