Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
Fisher Peak Brewing Company picked up a bronze at the Canada Beer Cup, adding some more hardware to an ever-growing list of accolades for their lineup of ales, stouts and everything in between.
The bronze is not the first accolade earned by brewmasters Jordon Aasland and Justin Swanson; the Hellroaring Scottish Ale (and others) has been recognized in provincial and national beer competitions for years.
"The golden child — the Scottish Ale. It's been a staple in the restaurant since 2016," said Swanson. "We had a big hurrah when it was launched, we had a guy with bagpipes come in and had a big Scottish welcome for the beer back then and it's just been our winner over the past few years."
Ahead of the Hellroaring Sottish Ale was Kahnawake Brewing Company out of Quebec earning a silver with their Hell's Gate offering, while Alberta's Blindman Brewing took gold with Perepllut Barley Wine.
Without spilling any trade secrets, a fresh batch starts with a seven hour process, then into a fermenter for 10-12 days, then it sits for a week before it's ready for consumption.
"It's a big beer, so there's more grain than any of our other beers, than any other recipes that we have here," Swanson said. "It almost doesn't fit in our system, we have to be very careful about how much water we add to it or else we're having a little bit of overflow issues.
"That's the main tenant of the beer, is that it's a lot of grain. So you're getting a lot more sugars and a lot more alcohol, a lot more flavour from those malts that you add there."
The Canada Beer Cup is a national competition celebrating independently owned and operated breweries across Canada.
Gold, silver and bronze awards are handed out in 56 beer categories and four packaging categories.
Judges from Europe, South America, USA and across Canada gather at Niagra Falls in September for three days of blind taste-testing, where they assign each beer a score.
There were 1,500 different brews to score this year, according to Hilary Hoogsteen, competition manager with Canada Beer Cup.
