Simeon Jones was well known in New Brunswick. Not only was he the popular mayor of Saint John from 1881 and 1884, he was also a master brewer, famous throughout the Maritimes for his robust, quaffable ales.
In the mid-1990s, Sean Dunbar, owner of Fredericton-based craft brewery, Picaroons, partnered with Kings Landing Historical Settlement north of Fredericton, to make Simeon Jones River Valley Amber Ale. Dunbar designed a beer like Jones would have brewed, and started selling it exclusively at the Kings Landing pub.
Born in 1828, Jones was raised on a farm in the St. John River Valley. He set out for Saint John in 1852 where he found work at a brewery. Within eight years, he bought the company and renamed it the Simeon Jones Brewery, making beer his life’s work.
After selling the brewery in 1892 to his sons, who renamed it Red Ball Brewery, Jones moved to New York and later to London, England. Three years after his death in 1915, the Oland family bought the Jones brewery and continued making ale and stout under the Red Ball banner until mothballing it in 1964.
The current Simeon Jones ale is what Dunbar calls a best guess. ”We came up with an amber ale and we used a British hop called fuggle. It might have been a hop that was grown around here then.”
The River Valley Amber Ale’s label is a reproduction of an old Simeon Jones label. Dunbar simply had Saint John replaced with Kings Landing.
While beer lovers can find Picaroons’ Simeon Jones beer in liquor stores across Atlantic Canada, the best place to enjoy a mug is at Kings Landing, in the candle-lit Simeon Jones Room at the King’s Head Inn, where the ambiance matches the ale's historical flavour.
After finishing off a pint, you can saunter up the hill to Jones’ childhood home, moved to Kings Landing stone by stone after the construction of the Mactaquac Dam flooded its original location in 1968.
“Simeon Jones did all the things in Saint John that Alexander Keith did in Halifax. He was mayor of the city and a prominent businessman who ended up doing great things for the province,” says Dunbar.
