A group of students, faculty and staff from Niagara College’s School of Wine, Beer and Spirits received a lesson in sensory analysis while participating in a Hop Rub for the Pink Boots Society.
The event was a precursor to the Pink Boots Collaboration Brew Day initiative – a global effort to support women in the fermentable beverage industry and one that NC’s Teaching Brewery has participated in since 2020.
Through the initiative, breweries from across the world create beers on or around International Women’s Day (March 8) using an exclusive Pink Boots hop blend from Yakima Chief Hops. For every pound sold to brewers, Yakima donates $3 to the Pink Boots Society for education and programming.
Third semester Brewmaster student Alanna Scully participates in the Hop Rub on Aug. 11.
The special hop blend is not only used collaboratively by teams when developing and brewing their Pink Boots beer recipes, it’s also chosen in a collective way. Through annual hop rub events, Pink Boots Society members provide sensory feedback for different Yakima hop varieties to help in the selection of the following year’s blend.
Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management program alumna and part-time faculty member Nicola Davey (2021), noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic Pink Boots began offering virtual hop rub kits to its membership. As a member herself, she was approached by the non-profit’s Canadian chapter to submit an application for a kit and quickly hopped on board while teaching in the program this summer.
“I joined Pink Boots during my first semester at Niagara College. They do quite a bit of good work, so I’m happy to support them,” said Davey, who co-created the recipe for NC’s inaugural Pink Boots beer in 2020. She also joined her classmates in 2021 to help brew the College’s second collaboration beer for the initiative.
Bringing the Hop Rub experience to NC for the first time on August 11, Davey organized an event in the sensory classroom at the Daniel J. Patterson Campus in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Participants included students, faculty and staff from the School of Wine, Beer and Spirits who completed a sensory analysis for 14 different hop samples, smelling and ranking each one.
Kyla Dewey, a first semester Brewmaster student, smells one of 14 hop samples.
In the end, Davey tallied up NC’s results to figure out the top seven samples and sent the feedback to the Pink Boots Society to help them in the selection process for their 2023 blend.
“A number of the other participants in Canada were breweries, but we were the only educational institution that participated in a hop rub this year,” she said.
Davey noted that with Pink Boots Collaboration Brew Day beers typically brewed in February and March, the hop blend is decided sometime in the fall to allow for the blend’s production and distribution to breweries.
The NC Teaching Brewery will support the Pink Boots mission for the fourth consecutive year by brewing a collaboration beer in 2023.
