Two local breweries recently brought home medals from the Canadian Brewing Awards.
The awards are a yearly event, bringing over 800 breweries from across the country to compete for a chance to win a medal in one of 61 categories.
For this year’s event, Land & Sea Brewing and RAD Brewing from Comox won medals for their beers. Land & Sea won gold and silver in the Cream Ale and North American style pale ale categories respectively, while RAD won bronze in the American style India pale ale category.
RAD brewmaster Tyler Papp, who has been brewing for over 20 years, says getting that level of recognition is a huge honour.
“Super grateful to get anything, especially at a national level in a category that is one of the harder categories with a lot of entries,” said Papp. “To bring something home to our brewery, to give us something to be recognized on that level is huge and I can’t say enough how proud I am of our whole team.”
Co-owner of RAD Chris Morrison says they opened the brewery in July last year to have their own beer to distribute in the valley and at Church Street Taphouse, who have the same owners.
He says when they entered the awards competition, they had only been open for six months.
“Based on the customer feedback and our own sense of the product, we felt very confident in putting our beer in the awards,” said Morrison.
“Having said that, going up against hundreds of breweries in IPA, one of the most competitive categories, we are blown away to get bronze in that category.”
Morrison says it’s been an exciting couple of days since winning the medal and they want to have that excitement roll through the summer.
For Land & Sea head brewer Tessa Gabiniewicz, she felt honoured to win two medals.
“It’s such an amazing community of craft beer that I’m a part of, and it really felt like something to be proud of,” said Gabiniewicz.
Gabiniewicz was hired as head brewer after years of experience working in different breweries throughout BC, including the Kootenays, Terrace, Campbell River, and Vancouver. She has opened three breweries, including Land & Sea.
She says in the lead-up to the awards, they aimed to make a beer that she and the community would want to drink.
“You can enter awards and brew beers two-style to try to win categories but this time the assistant brewer, Levon Olsen and I were just brewing beer for the community and for us,” said Gabiniewicz. “We’re always looking for the best possible practices to make sure our beer is clean and to-style.”
She says that she thanks the community for their support.
