Shane Wright didn’t know what to make of the email.
It had been months since he submitted his Target Brew project, a sweet stout, for judging. And here it was, a message telling him he’d won the top prize, a scholarship from the Matt Soos Memorial Fund.
“I didn’t believe it at first. I kept re-reading the email thinking I’d read it wrong,” Wright said. “I figured someone else won because I hadn’t heard anything.”
That’s in part because it was a contest like no other this year. Judging the student-made brews was delayed due to the lockdown and stay at home orders issued by the province in late December. Typically, Target Brew project winners are chosen by judges at Project Brew, the end-of-term beer fest that showcases suds made by students in the college’s Brewmaster and Brewery Operations program.
This time, a trio of judges sat down virtually in January to assess third-term students’ beers, which had to use ingredients at the NC brewery, including college-grown hops, and be made according to Canadian Brewing Awards guidelines specific to each style of beer.
It was also the first time Wright and his classmates created their own beer recipes for brewing. Beers by student brewers Ryan Oliver and Mitchell Marquis rounded out the top three Target Brew entries respectively.
Picking a winner isn’t an easy job, said Victor North, judge and brewmaster support liaison at the college.
“We judge by consensus and all judges have to decide if a beer is worthy of an award. Thankfully, all of the beers are quite good, so generally, it can be a difficult process of elimination,” North said. “They’re all good so the challenge is determining which on is great.”
That means getting down to the “nitty gritty,” he explained. In the end, they chose Wright’s brew after an hour and a half of sampling and discussion. Winning beers are selected based on aesthetics, technical attributes of the style and whether the brew could be commercially viable.
“It’s good that picking the winner is hard,” North said. “If it’s a case where the winner is quite plain to see and the others are poor, that would be discouraging. What you want is what we have where it’s truly a process of elimination. It’s good because that’s what you want to see in the industry as well.”
In the case of Wright’s sweet stout, the nitty gritty included working with seven different malts to create the coffee and dark chocolate flavours for which the style is known. He also had to add just the right amount of lactose so the final product wasn’t cloying.
Making a sweet stout was on Wright’s mind even before starting the brewmaster program at Niagara. He had his recipe on paper two weeks before brew day but only decided on the finishing touch — three kilograms of lactose — the day before.
“This was my baby, the first one I completely made the recipe for and brought up,” Wright said.
The Matt Soos Memorial Fund was established by the Soos family in honour of brewmaster alumnus Matt Soos, who passed away soon after graduating five years ago. Soos’s family and friends also established Natterjack Brewery in West Lorne in Matt’s honour in 2018.
Scholarships like this are always welcomed by students, who often juggle jobs with school to make ends meet, explained Jon Downing, College brewmaster. But that’s especially true this year with the pandemic limiting employment opportunities.
Wright, who has relied on students loans to fund his education, was grateful for the $1,500 prize that came with his win.
“I have a lot of debt to pay off and that helps toward that,” he said. “Just winning in general boosts my confidence a lot. It makes me feel like I’m doing good things here and there are good things in my future career. It adds to my excitement about what’s ahead.”
