In it's first year of existence, with its debut brew, the Barkerville Brewing Company has won its first national award.
The 12th annual Canadian Brewing Awards were handed out recently in Fredericton. The event, led by the TAPS Beer Magazine company with about 200 participating breweries from all regions of the nation, is the premier competitive beer festival in the country. Teams of more than 20 qualified judges choose gold, silver and bronze winners in each of 38 categories, plus they select an overall Beer of the Year and Brewery of the Year. In the North American Style Amber/Red Ale division, the local brewhouse picked up the silver medal for its 18 Karat Ale inaugural flavour.
"As a small brewery, to be named one of the great beers of Canada, it means a lot to us," said Barkerville Brewing Company owner Russ Ovans. "And this was our first one, our only one at the time of entry, and now we have five more pours so next year we will enter more categories and be in the running for the big prizes."
In the past five years, the biggest names in Canadian beer have won awards at the CBAs: Labatt's, Molson, Sleeman, Moosehead, and many from the growing list of craft breweries under the Canadian flag. These awards could only exist with the proliferation of the boutique brewing industry providing enough material on which to base all these choices.
One of the biggest and oldest in Canada is Prince George's Pacific Western Brewery with its Pacific, Scandal and Cariboo subsidiary labels (they did not participate in this year's CBA submissions). One of the newest is Barkerville Brewing Company, open less than one calendar year.
"This award gives us a level of vindication," said Ovans. "We went out of our way to make our first beer something that was palatable for people not accustomed to craft beer, and we still got flak from some people that it was too bitter. I don't know if they were expecting Bud Lite or what, and you can never blame people for what they like and what they don't, but 18 Karat is a full-bodied beer that we feel is very accessible, and now we have this award to back up our claims. It's a great story for us, and for the Cariboo. We're the little brewery that walked the talk."
Customers have been walking off with armloads and pint-fulls of the stuff, too. The little brew factory employs four full-time and two part-time people now, producing everything from bottles to kegs, and the public can find their labels in every corner of the province thanks to an aggressive distribution arrangement.
"I think other than Quesnel, where the reception has been just astonishing, P.G. is the second biggest market for our products," Ovans said. "Right away we got some big commitments from the Shooters group, Nancy O's, The Copper Pig, and we are now in all the government liquor stores as well in Prince George. But if P.G. doesn't step it up, Victoria is about to pass you. We're on tap in some pretty big pubs in Victoria. We are trying to get into some key places in P.G., too, and we keep hearing from some of those establishments that they want to support local. Well, we are local, so we're hoping to see them add our name to their list. We have been judged independently as being a world-class operation, you don't have to take our word for it."
Ovans noted that "some pretty important craft breweries were shut out of this year's awards" so he knows these medals are not easy to attain. Expectations for next year will be tempered by that realism. He's still excited to just be in the midst of the accelerating brewing industry in Canada. B.C., especially, is a hotbed for the do-it-yourself commercial brew. Of the 114 medals given, 39 went to Ontario while much less populous B.C. won 35 and next was much more populous Quebec at 19. All other provinces combined for the remainder. And while provinces like Manitoba and Newfoundland have four or five craft brewers each, our neighbour Alberta has about a dozen, B.C. has more than 80 with several others coming online every year.
