Niagara College’s Teaching Brewery has done it again.
The Teaching Brewery’s Beer 101 series won silver at the 18th annual Canadian Brewing Awards in the Bock Traditional German Style category.
The Beer 101 Bock was brewed by students at the colleges teaching brewery, and was designed by College Brewmaster Jon Downing.
This is the first time one of the Brewery’s bocks has won at the Brewing Award, considered to be one of the most brewing competitions in the country.
Downing describes the bock beer itself as a lager brewed in the traditional German style with a Canadian twist.
“Our version is based on a traditional Bavarian Bock style, its actually a dark Bock. We do use German hoops in it and Bavarian malts, and Canadian malts.
“Ours has the toasted malty rich flavour from the German malts used in it. It has fairly good body because it is stronger, but it has a light crispness that a lager would have as well.”
The beer itself was actually brewed last year before the pandemic hit, and the college was forced to close for the semester.
Downing said the timing of the bock being brewed might have contributed to its success.
“It was actually brewed right at the start of March, so literally the week before everything shut down. So we basically left it in the fermenter and bock beers normally would actually be brewed and aged for stored for several months, so because of COVID we actually got to do that.
“Normally, we would do around 8 weeks, but we actually did about 12 or 14 weeks of aging on this beer which obviously helped because it allowed it to win.”
This isn’t the first time Niagara College’s Brewery program has seen success at the Canadian Brewing Awards.
In 2019, the colleges, Beer 101 Bitter and Beer 101 Strong both won bronze in their respect categories, while in 2018 Beer 101 Strong won silver.
Outside of it’s Beer 101 series, in 2013, the colleges Butler’s Bitter took home the gold.
All the beers in the brewery’s Beer 101 series are brewed by students in the Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management program at the Niagara College Teaching Brewery in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Downing said students in the program have been back in the brewery this fall developing new flavours that he hopes will be on the shelves in the coming months.
“Obviously we had a little bit of a break there, but right now they are back at it, and coming up in a month or two we will have dozens more varieties of beer available for sale that the students have actually designed and made.”
The Beer 101 Bock, along with other blends in the Beer 101 series, can be purchased online at the Wine Visitor + Education Centre website through the college’s Niagara-on-the-Lake campus.
Bryan Levesque is a reporter for the Local Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the Government of Canada, with Grimsby Lincoln News.
