Moncton brewery still looking at export markets and winery

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BY ALAN COCHRANE
TIMES & TRANSCRIPT STAFF

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It's been 10 years since the Pump House Brewery poured its first glass from the taps on Orange Lane, but founder Shaun Fraser isn't the kind of guy to let something like an anniversary slow down the progress of his business.

"We just bought a canning plant so we'll be starting that next year, and with the lower weight of cans it opens up export possibilities in the U.S. and Europe," Fraser said yesterday as he was running around making deals and preparing for tomorrow's 10th anniversary celebrations. "And we just purchased some land and are looking at building a winery, but that will be in four or five years."

Today, the Pump House has five different brands of its own bottled beer, eight on tap and several more that come and go with the seasons. The beer is available in every other province except Saskatchewan and Quebec.

"I always wanted to be Canada's first national microbrewery and we're just about there...just a few more provinces and we'll have it."

Over the last 10 years, the Pump House Brewery has become a pillar of Metro Moncton's economic growth and tomorrow the storied sudsmaker will bring back its first customer to help celebrate a business anniversary.

The 10th anniversary celebration begins at the Pump House -- located on Orange Lane, just off Main Street behind Moncton City Hall -- tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. Ray Auffrey, who bought the first beer 10 years ago and has become affectionately known as customer number one, will get the honour of pouring the first glass of the anniversary brew at 4 p.m.

Fraser's love of beer goes back to collecting bottle caps as a child, and evolved into the study of how it was made. He got his start making beer in the early 1980s and developed his business while keeping his day job with the Moncton Fire Department. The Pump House poured its first beer on Sept. 3, 1999 at 4 p.m. and since then Fraser and his wife Lilia have received many awards and accolades while working hard to keep the business moving forward and ever-expanding.

Fraser has said opening his own brewery and restaurant was a dream come true, but he and Lilia continue to build on their success.

The short version of the Pump House story is that Fraser wanted to learn how to make beer and applied for jobs with the big breweries but was turned down. He wrote a letter to the TV show Thrill of a Lifetime and got a shot at making beer inside the Labbat plant in Ontario. A few years later, German brewer Hans Westner set up the HansHaus Brewery near the Moncton airport. Fraser got a job there, but the brewery went out of business. Soon after that, Moncton businessman Joel Attis hired Fraser to make beer at the Fat Tuesday's brew pub on Main Street, which also shut down after a couple of years.

Fraser then got a job selling brewery supplies and travelled all over the world to help install and set up the equipment. While in Kazakhstan, he met his future wife Lilia and arranged for her to move to Canada.

The Pump House opened in 1999, complete with its own functioning brewery that offered customers the unique experience of watching how the beer was made and then sitting down to enjoy one with a home-made pizza cooked in a wood-fired oven.

The expansion continued with the purchase of a building on Mill Road and bottling equipment to brew, bottle and package the Pump House brands for sale in liquor stores. The Mill Road building was then developed into another restaurant called the Barn Yard BBQ.

The Pump House has won many brewing and business awards, including Canada's "Brewery of the Year."

The Pump House employs over 50 people and the owners are looking at franchising the pub and introducing their own line of food products. And the brewmasters are always working on new brands of beer that will carry them through the next decade.

Daniel Allain, executive-director of Downtown Moncton Centre-Ville Inc., praised the Pump House founders for their entrepreneurial spirit.

"The had a great idea and they stuck to it and kept improving on it," Allain said. "They took a chance by building a pub on a side street, but it worked and became a downtown destination for people. Whenever people come to Moncton from out of town and are looking for a place to see, I send them to the Pump House because it is synonymous to Moncton. There's no place like it anywhere else."