Hops, yeast, water and malted barley along with some beer magic and a healthy dose of skill have combined to give local microbrasserie Brauwerk Hoffman four medals at the recently held Ontario Brewing Awards.
The brewery and brewpub, located on Industrielle Road in Clarence-Rockland, won a gold medal for their Oktoberfest Festbier, silver medals for Rock Lite and Hefeweizen (the latter having won bronze at the 2024 Canadian Brewing Awards) and a bronze medal for their Belgian-style Tripel called Mea Culpa.
For Hoffman co-owner and brewmaster Eric Mainville, the recent awards create a sense of pride for both the brewery and beer lovers in the area.
“I think it’s great, and our staff like seeing our success,” Mainville says. “When we win something, I think the community likes seeing it too.”
He says generally his personal favourites are German-style beers.
“But probably my number-one beer style are the Belgian tripels, but those aren’t for everyday drinking.”
Local accolades and a sales boost
At the same awards ceremony, Broken Stick Brewing Company inside Hammond Golf and Country Club won a bronze medal for their Belgian Ale called “The Longest Day,” while Beau’s of Vankleek Hill (which merged with Toronto’s Steam Whistle Brewing in 2022) won in the Dark British Beer category.
Notably, but slightly further afield, Spark Beer and Pizza of downtown Ottawa won “Best in Show,” among five other awards, for their “Cloudland” barrel-aged “Oud Bruin” (old brown) Flemish-style beer.
The accolades are all well and good, says Mainville of the new Hoffman medal collection, but there is a financial benefit to gold, silver and bronze that can catch the eye of both licensees and customers when they learn of a suds’ podium finishes.
“I can tell that there is a bit of an uptick in terms of sales,” he says. “These were already good sellers for us, but this adds that little bit more.”
It’s only beer, but, microeconomics, psychology and consumer-choice theory come into play before the tap handles behind the bar are pulled: facing a dozen or more brands and styles when they visit a bar, customers have to make a choice and might be on the fence about their selection, says Mainville.
“If we mention a brewing award, it can help them say, oh, okay, I’ll try that one.”
Judging by independent “cicerones” and beer experts
There is a cost to submitting entries and the cost of shipping samples; if they want to attend the gala, there’s a cost a brewery incurs for that too.
There are dozens of entries that Ontario breweries compete against, with many more at Canadian or international competitions. At a recent “World Beer Cup,” over 9,000 beers were entered in over 200 categories.
The judging is done by beer experts, some of whom might be what are called cicerones, essentially the equivalent of a certified wine sommelier; some might be brewmasters with decades of experience and university degrees in chemistry or are graduates of programs such as Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management at Niagara College.
The beer a brewery submits is filed into a specific category, and panels of judges evaluate the styles in blind tastings based on a set of standardized criteria, according to Mainville.
“There’s neutral glassware, and they even try for a neutral environment. There’s a panel of judges sitting together with a senior judge. Before they submit the winners, they do a sort of round table to see if somebody is way off,” Mainville says.
Depending on the competition, brewers get the judges’ evaluation sheets so they can see how their beer was critiqued.
Medals are good for our food and beverage businesses
Truth be told, Mainville is pretty relaxed about what he sends to competitions such as the Ontario Brewing Awards.
“I leave it quite open,” he says, “I might send anything from one or two beers, to maybe four, especially if I think we have better chances of placing something.”
Sometimes that magic happens, “the artisanal side” of brewing he calls it, adding that in fact he almost didn’t submit the gold medal-winning Festbier.
“In an ideal world, I would have it all mapped out ahead of time, but I don’t brew anything different. The odd time it will happen that something worked really well that day, and I say, wow, this batch is really on. If it’s right around the time of submitting, then I’ll go, well, I’m going to send this beer.”
A boost for business and an uptick in sales aside, when the beer magic happens, it bodes well for the larger food-and-beverage community here in eastern Ontario – including the smaller centres outside the nation’s capital.
“The awards gives us something to talk about in the industry,” Mainville says of the bragging rights. “Broken Stick are friends of ours, and they won a medal for their saison, too. It’s great because we love seeing that in our area.”
With nearly 50 breweries in the Ottawa area, local medals are a kind of voice for local brewing that Mainville says can serve the purpose of drawing more attention from association officials to this part of eastern Ontario that good brewing is happening here.
Citing that at the award gala there was some good-natured competition between brewing colleagues and a photo op of the winners from the Ottawa area, Mainville says that there’s also a sense of unity amid the boasting and bragging rights.
“Together we were gently heckling the organizers that for the last two years now, I think, the awards have been in the Niagara region. We’d like to see it come this way.”
