Recognition at the Canadian Brewing Awards has fueled excitement for local brewmasters to work on new recipes for possible submissions at next year's competition.
Refined Fool Brewing Company recently won bronze for its craft beer called "Zane Lost His Avocado Bag" in the American Style Imperial India Pale Ale category at the 2021 Canadian Brewing Awards and Conference.
Senior Sales Executive Greg Edgar described the IPA as being a clean, crisp beer.
"It does pack a punch. It's a 7.6 [per cent] ABV (alcohol by volume) and 25 IBUs (international bitterness units) so it has that high alcohol content but certainly, the taste profile to it is very light, very bright, kind of fruity, and floral," said Edgar. "It's not something that's going to overpower your pallet but it has that high ABV that these brewed IPAs are kind of known for."
Edgar said the bronze-winning beer was first brewed about a year and a half ago.
"We were very confident when we submitted that it would be in the running," he said. "I don't know if we ever thought we would win one just yet but obviously it was a very pleasant surprise when we got the notification that we won the bronze."
"Zane Lost His Avocado Bag" is available at 130 LCBO stores across the province. Edgar said it is one of their more popular beers that is available year-round.
Edgar said the Canadian Brewing Awards was a competition the brewery "earmarked" as one that would help them gauge where they stand in the industry. He said to come away with an award is a testament to the work being done.
"It's a real positive indication that we're doing things right, we're taking it very seriously and putting stuff out that is being highly regarded within the industry," he said.
Moving forward, Edgar said they have a couple of beers that could potentially be entered into next year's competition and a few other recipes that are in the works.
"There are certainly some other products that we have earmarked that have been doing really well. One is our 'Van Full of Weirdos' which is a juicy IPA and currently it is our best-selling beer at LCBO," he said. "We do have a couple of new products that have not yet hit the shelves but are earmarked for 2022, in the spring, to be coming out. One's a sessionable IPA and then we have an east coast double IPA and a west coast double IPA which have also been highly regarded so far in the limited releases they've had in the taprooms."
There were 56 categories in total at this year's Canadian Brewing Awards.