Success continues to pour in for Niagara College’s trailblazing Teaching Brewery, with three gold medals and a Top 10 ranking from the 2021 U.S. Open Beer Championship.

For the second consecutive year, three popular student-crafted brews from NC’s popular Beer 101 series have captured golds at the U.S. Open: Beer 101 Bitter (Bitter category), Beer 101 Strong Ale (Old Ale category), and Beer 101 Bock (Bock category).

The NC Teaching Brewery tied for the tenth spot in the competition’s list of Top 10 Breweries, and was the only teaching brewery to achieve a Top 10 ranking, alongside professional breweries from across the U.S. and one other Canadian brewery (Wellington Brewery, Guelph).

Beer 101 Bitter and Strong Ale have consistently won medals at the U.S. Open Beer Championship. They both have a history of success at the Canadian Brewing Awards, with gold (Butler’s Bitter, bottle version of Beer 101 Bitter, 2013), silver (Strong Ale, 2018), and bronze (Bitter and Strong Ale, 2019), medals. Bock has also garnered recent success, including gold at the Ontario Brewing Awards and silver at the Canadian Brewing Awards in 2020.

News about the U.S. Open Beer Championship was applauded by staff at the NC Teaching Brewery, which is home to NC’s Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management program. Both the facility and the program were the first in Canada when they launched more than 10 years ago.

Steve Gill, General Manager of NC’s Learning Enterprises – including the Teaching Brewery, Teaching Winery, and Teaching Distillery – said that he was honoured and humbled by the championship results.

“Back in 2007, when we were looking at starting the Brewmaster program, who would have known that it would become the premier spot for beer studies that it is today,” said Gill. “Our students are consistently making high-quality beers that shine among the best on the national and international stage.”

“Our entire staff and our students continue to show how their training and development in our brewing program allows them to succeed when producing at the NC Teaching Brewery,” said Craig Youdale, Dean of NC’s Canadian Food and Wine Institute.

“This recognition shows that our students, under instruction from Head Brewer George Eagleson and Lead Brewer Brad Barta, are taught how to brew world-class beers,” noted Brewmaster Professor Jon Downing. “Each time our Beer 101s are brewed, it is by a different group of students in different semesters, usually as a collaborative effort between two or more classes.”

The 2021 U.S. Open Beer Championship drew more than 8,000 beer entries representing 140 different styles for this year’s competition. Winners were announced on September 6.

Students brew up fourth place at U.S. Open College

Joel Droogh holds up a can of Holstein and Jersey – a milk stout he created and named after two cow breeds at his family’s Ottawa-based dairy farm – while accompanied by his cows. His beer recently won gold at the U.S. Open College Beer Championship.

Brewmaster students from NC had four extra reasons to cheer on September 6, when the U.S. Open College Beer Championship announced the results of its competition, geared to colleges and breweries that teach brewing courses.

The NC Teaching Brewery tied for fourth place overall, with four beer entries created by NC Brewmaster students winning hardware. Joel Droogh’s Holstein and Jersey (cream stout) won gold; Charles Rempel’s Heart in Hand (amber ale) won silver; and Andrew Plesko’s Ice Kolsch Hops (classic German-style Kolsch), as well as Ryan Cook’s Napoleon’s Final Defeat (Belgian blonde) won bronze.

The winning beers, which all incorporate NC-grown hops, were created by students as part of their target brew projects in April. They completed the program in August and will officially graduate this fall.

Droogh was excited and surprised by his gold-medal-win for a beer he created and named after two cow breeds from his family’s Ottawa-based dairy farm. He has since returned to Ottawa where he continues to combine his passions for farming and beer.

“The feeling of winning gold was a shocker plus great excitement for me and my family and an enormous sense of pride being able to represent Niagara College,” said Droogh, who noted that he and his family enjoyed a celebratory toast to his win at the farm. “This is such a landmark for my career as I just entered the brewing industry three years ago right after high school and I know this is just the start.”

“Winning a bronze medal was a pretty special way to end my time at Niagara College,” said Ryan Cook who currently works at Railway City Brewing Co. in St. Thomas.

Cook was also proud of the Teaching Brewery’s overall success at the U.S. Open Beer Championship. “Given that student-brewed beers are winning gold medals in an international competition, it really speaks to the quality of education we are receiving at NC,” he said.

“It’s a wonderful feeling to see all of the blood, sweat, and tears I poured into this beer be recognized,” said Rempel who now works at Blackburn Brewhouse in Niagara Falls as a packaging operator. “It’s meaningful in a way to show me I’m on the right career path.”

For Plesko, who is currently working as a brewer at Muskoka Brewery, his medal offers valued recognition of the skills he has acquired. “Recipe creation is important, but if you can’t execute it well, the ingredients mean nothing,” he said.

Now in its fifth year, the U.S. Open College Beer Championship drew entries from 11 postsecondary institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

For details about the U.S. Open beer competitions, visit usopenbeer.com and usopencollege.com.

Student-crafted beer from NC’s Teaching Brewery is available for purchase alongside wine, cider and spirits from the College’s Teaching Winery and Teaching Distillery at the Wine Visitor + Education Centre (135 Taylor Rd., Niagara-on-the-Lake). Proceeds from products sold support student success at Niagara College.

Niagara College offers more than 130 diploma, bachelor degree and advanced-level programs; as well as more than 600 credit, vocational and general interest Part-Time Studies courses. Areas of specialization include food and wine sciences, advanced technology, media, applied health and community safety, supported by unique learning enterprises in food, wine, beer, distilling, horticulture and esthetics. For more information visit niagaracollege.ca.

 

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A Niagara College student-made honey spirit has earned some sweet recognition in the U.S. Open Whiskey and Spirits Competition.

Ambrosia, created as a Captsone project by Nic Burton, Jeremy Shantz and Lucan Wai before they graduated from the College’s Artisan Distilling program last spring, won bronze in the Specialty Spirits category in the recent competition that judges submissions from craft distillers in Canada and the U.S.

It’s the first time a student Captsone project from the Artisan Distilling program has received such accolades.

“It was competing in one of the most diverse categories in the U.S. Whiskey Open and receiving a bronze medal is a testament to the high quality of work being done by our students,” said David Dickson, NC’s head distiller. “I am very proud of all of the Captsone projects from the 2021 graduates.”

Just as notable, Ambrosia, which is part of the College’s Spirits 101 lineup of student-made alcohol, is one of the few honey-based spirits made in North America, Dickson added.

Burton, Shantz and Wai said the recognition for their first attempt at designing their own spirit is a boost to their confidence as they embark on their careers in the industry.

“It’s amazing the quality of the program at Niagara College, and that students could come up with something that would win an award at a competition speaks to the quality of the teaching staff and the program,” Wai said.

Shantz, who discussed his interest in distilling honey products with Dickson early in the program, said so few do it because it’s an expensive endeavour. However, Ambrosia, which means food or drink of the gods, was made possible thanks to a collaboration that resulted in a donation of 100 kilograms of honey from the College’s Commercial Beekeeping program.

“We’re definitely very grateful to the beekeeping program, which had honey,” Shantz said. “That was wonderful.”

Even with the access to the raw ingredients, the gods weren’t always smiling upon Ambrosia. For starters, honey is antimicrobial, making fermentation challenging. The pandemic, which limited on-campus work, also meant the students relied on others, including Dickson, to keep tabs on their project when they couldn’t.

Given how rare honey spirits are, no one knew what the end goal should be unlike with gin or whisky, for example.

“We had a vague idea of where we wanted it to go but never having worked with honey before and David not having worked with honey before, we had no idea how it would turn out,” Shantz said.

The end result is a spirit distilled like rum to bring out the honey’s floral notes. Ambrosia was back-sweetened with additional honey to create mouthfeel and further accentuate its flowery traits.

“A big thing we were hoping for is that floral characteristic common in honey,” Burton said. “But it ended up tasting like honey, which was very neat.”

Given the hurdles and the triumphs in producing Ambrosia, winning bronze at such a significant competition speaks to the abilities of all who had a hand in making it, said Steve Gill, general manager of the Niagara College Learning Enterprise Corporation (NCLEC).

“The future of craft distilling in Canada is clearly in good hands when you consider our students are creating spirits that can compete against other established distilleries,” Gill said. “This award speaks to the calibre of student our Artisan Distilling program attracts and to David Dickson’s ability to bring out the best in his students. I’m proud of everyone involved.”

Ambrosia is available for sale, along with other student-made spirits, at the Niagara College Wine Visitor + Education Centre or online at ncteachingwinery.ca. Sales of the spirits support student education.

Niagara College’s Teaching Distillery is a 2,500-square-foot facility equipped with six stills, four mash tuns and 10 fermenters. Home to the College’s Artisan Distilling (Graduate Certificate) program, students produce a variety of distilled products including vodka, gin, brandy, rum, whisky and other spirits. It opened in September 2018, completing the trifecta of beverage fermentation sciences at NC’s learning enterprises, following the footsteps of its Teaching Winery and Teaching Brewery, which were also the first of their kind in Canada.

Niagara College offers more than 130 diploma, bachelor degree and advanced level programs; as well as more than 600 credit, vocational and general interest Part-Time Studies courses. Areas of specialization include food and wine sciences, advanced technology, media, applied health and community safety, supported by unique learning enterprises in food, wine, beer, distilling, horticulture and esthetics. For more information visit niagaracollege.ca.