College brewers win awards

Three Olds College Brewing students are toasting each other after winning the all-around school award – the Hops Connect Cup -- as well as first place in two individual categories during the fourth annual Hops Connect student brewing club competition in B.C.

Second-year brewmaster student Curtis Metzger won the pilsner category with an entry he created and named Strathcona Pilsner. Also, first-year students Dan Lake and Carson Petersen won the stout category for their product, called Breakfast Stout.

The competition, held earlier this month at the Big Rock Urban Brewery in Vancouver, B.C., featured submissions from five different breweries. Olds College was the only representative from outside B.C.

“We're still waiting on the trophy,” Lake says.

He and Petersen say unfortunately, the trophy is not shaped like a beer stein or beer bottle.

“It doesn't look anything like a beer stein,” Petersen says.

Lake agrees.

“It's a big cup with two big handles on it,” he says. “But it holds beer. We'll put beer in it.”

Lake says he and Petersen made an almost last-minute decision to enter.

“We were planning on brewing a stout anyways for just our own purposes and then this contest just kind of came in,” he says. “We kind of had a little late notice, actually.”

“What happens is you have to brew certain styles of beer with the hops that they provide.

“So instead of coming up with a different style, we were already going to brew a style, so we just inserted their hops into our recipe that we already had, made a few additions and then we ended up winning,” Lake says.

It was the first time Lake had ever entered a beer in competition so he was pretty surprised that he and Petersen won their category.

Petersen on the other hand, had won before in home-brewing competitions, including a bronze medal.

Both figure there's a good chance they'll enter the competition again next year.

“I think we'll probably do it again; maybe a different beer, maybe a couple of different categories, because I don't think we filled out our allotment for our college,” Lake says.

“Each college can have two different entries for each style and I think there were five styles. I doubt we had even five entries total instead of the 10 that you would be allowed.”

Petersen wants a chance to “defend the stout title” again.

“Stout's one of my favourites. I think we were brewing a stout just because it was coming into fall and that traditionally is a time when stouts come out – it's the season for them,” he says.

Metzger entered the pilsner competition because he wanted to push himself.

“I wanted to challenge myself,” he says. “Pilsner's a fairly unforgiving style to make. You can't make a lot of mistakes on it. It's a fairly technical beer to make and we had a fairly short amount of time (in which to make it).”

It wasn't easy.

He had to overcome some hurdles.

“I had some challenges with my temperature control in my basement,” he says.

“This brew, I was using a brand new chilling system that I'd built from scratch, so it had some hiccups. I was working the bugs out a bit. So to have it come out as good as it did and get some really favourable reviews from the judges, that was a really pleasant surprise,” he adds.

“I was hoping to score well, but winning it – that was icing on the cake.”

He says it was the first time he'd entered the competition as well.

Metzger entered for two main reasons: to represent the school and to serve as an example to the first-year students.

“They followed it well,” he says. “I couldn't be prouder of the first-year classes. It's amazing to see these guys succeeding already. I have high hopes and I can't wait to see where the class behind us ends up.”

Metzger is also thrilled that they won the overall title.

“That makes me more proud than winning the individual honour,” he says.

“(It's) amazing; knowing that the quality that we're putting out as a group is good enough to stand with a bunch of guys in B.C. who are in the heartland of Canadian brewing right now,” Metzger adds. “It's pretty gratifying to know that we can stand on our own against them.”