Road Trip - Fundy & St John

It was forecast to rain all day today, so when I woke up and it wasn't yet raining, we hurriedly got up and packed the tent up before it got wet. Even though the tent is quite well waterproofed it’s still really unpleasant trying to fold it up when it’s covered in water, because then you become covered in water too. We ate a quick breakfast of muesli and yogurt sitting on the back of the car, and then drove into the nearby town of Alma for some coffee.

While we were sitting in the café it began to bucket down outside. We ended up staying in the café for a couple of hours because it looked too yuck outside. While we were there I polished and published our last two blog posts, and Katie researched closures on Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia due to hurricane Dorian. Some of the places we have booked are still temporarily closed but are tentatively scheduled to open again before we get there. We booked a couple of nights at a KOA campground on PEI in Charlottetown, which is further inland than the National Park that we had wanted to stay at and so maybe was less exposed to the storm. At least the KOA is open!

On our way into town we had stopped at the National Park registration office, because we’d arrived when they were closed last night. Being that one of Fundy’s major tourist attractions is its incredible tide, the local high and low tide times were posted on a huge board behind the desk. The ranger there gave us some recommendations of walks that we could do around the park, and some that had dense canopy cover so might be less unpleasant in the rain. Sitting in the café and watching the torrential downpour, we decided that it would still be pretty gross.

Instead of going for a hike, we hopped back in the car and drove an hour and a half along the coast to St John. St John is the second largest city in New Brunswick after Moncton (it had been the largest until 2016; its population is in decline), and the third largest port in Canada.

Our first stop in town was the St John City Market, which we thought was going to be a local produce market full of fruit, vegetables, and seafood but turned out to be a miniature version of any other tourist market. Slightly disappointed, we didn’t spend too long there, and left to wander down to the waterfront where Katie had found a restaurant selling the iconic lobster roll.

The restaurant we found was right across the road from the cruise ship terminal, and so of course was heavily decked out in every clichéd nautical, fishing, or lobster themed prop you could imagine. It had good reviews though! We arrived a few minutes before they opened, so wandered around some nearby roads for a few minutes.

The lobster roll is pretty basic; a grilled soft white hotdog bun split in half and stuffed with lobster meat, and dressed with celery, butter, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. It was also, of course, served with a large side of fries. Perhaps it had been overhyped, or we had an incorrect perception of what it was going to be, but the lobster roll didn’t live up to either of our expectations. Lobster meat is expensive, so we both agreed that there’s better meals that you could buy for $20. Nevertheless, we’re open to trying a few more as we travel to other places, just to make sure we’re getting the full picture!

After this late lunch, we drove another few minutes further into St John where we found the Moosehead Brewery. Moosehead is an independent brewery whose beer is pretty huge all through Canada, as well as some places in the USA that they export to. We had just sat down at the bar to begin tasting some beers when the bartender told us that a tour had just started which we could catch if we ran up the parking lot to where it was starting! As we arrived at the doors to the building where the tour started, some office workers were just leaving and asked if we were there for the tour. Perfect timing, as the tour had already left and everything was locked up, so she showed us down through a rabbit warren of office corridors and back staircases to where the tour group of three other people had just started learning about Moosehead’s history.

Moosehead started back in 1867 in Halifax where it was based until 1917 when the Halifax Explosion (as of today the third largest conventional explosive detonation in history) destroyed the brewery and killed many of their staff. They then re-established themselves on the current site here in St John, which is still their only brewery.

The tour started with a tasting of their main beer production lines, including their pale ale which they assured us hasn’t changed since it was first introduced in 1931. We also tried a lager, a radler, and a small batch hand crafted beer which was meant to be hoppy, but we found it to be less so than the pale ale.

From here we moved on into a huge room where their old copper mash tun and boiler where still installed in their original setting. These absolutely enormous vessels, along with the tiled floor and walls and the brass valve control wheels made the whole place feel like a mix of Willy Wonka, a hospital, and a science fiction spaceship control facility. This equipment wasn’t in use anymore, as the caustic solution they were required to clean everything with was too harsh on the copper and so it needed too much maintenance. Instead of removing and replacing it, however, they had just doubled the size of the room and installed stainless-steel versions right next to them. I guess this is a testament to how much money they make, that they can leave an area of this size unused.

Next stop on the tour was the cold room where the enormous tanks of brewed beer were stored. Each tank held over 200,000 litres of beer, and we were standing in front of tank number 16. The ends of the tanks protruded through walls on either side of the gantry we were standing on (each one longer than a train carriage, we were told), and there were many more floors above and below us visible through the gaps in the gratings. Our tour guide opened a valve on the side of one of the nearest tanks, and we filled glasses with fresh unpasteurized lager. It was quite nice!

The last point was in the canning and bottling facility. We watched the machinery that took brand new cans, missing their tops, from a pallet and organised them onto a single-file conveyor belt. Our guide plucked one of these cans from where they passed near the walkway and handed it around. They’re so fragile when they don’t yet have a lid, or any pressure inside them! From here, the cans rushed off to a huge spinning machine in a far corner which purged the air from the can before filling them with beer and crimping the top on.

The full and sealed cans then went off to a pasteurizer, where they were sprayed with hot water for several minutes to kill anything living inside the can. The beer is totally safe to drink without undergoing this process, but without doing it the brewery wouldn’t be able to guarantee the shelf life. We ended the tour back in the tasting room where we had initially arrived. We paid $20 each for the tour, which is maybe a little expensive for just a tour, but with the amount of free beer we were offered it was definitely good value. Unfortunately, we had another hour and a half of driving back to Fundy, so we didn’t take full advantage of the unlimited samples.

We arrived back at the campground just as it started to pour with rain again. We’d stopped at a supermarket on the way to get things to make dinner but didn’t really like the idea of getting soaking wet while we cooked some curry. I did some searching on Google maps and found that while most of the shops in Alma were closed by this time, the café that we’d had coffee at this morning was still open! We were one of the only diners, and had some yummy pasta puttanesca.