Around 1,000 fans of beer filled the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre on Saturday for the Sault Ste. Marie Festival of Beer’s biggest year yet.
“Five years ago when we started this, there were only five craft breweries in Ontario and now there is somewhere around 150. In recent years craft beer has kind of taken off and we’re just capturing that,” said event co-organizer Stephen Alexander.
20 craft breweries with over 60 types of beer, as well as other businesses selling ‘craft’ products like vodka, hot sauce, beef jerky, and more offered their unique small-scale fare inside the museum’s hanger amongst the vintage bushplane exhibits.
The amount in which craft breweries have taken off in recent years was evident by all the young businesses at Saturday's event.
Types of breweries like the Manitoulin Brewing Company who haven’t even been open a year yet and who are finding a lot of success with their only product, Swing Bridge Blonde Ale.
Ottawa’s Broadhead Brewing Company co-owner Josh Laroque came up with his partner Laura Francis-Lamb and they were pouring glasses of the company’s officially (not even released yet) Bodacious Blueberry Blonde.
“I have the boring stable job while he pursues his passion,” said Francis-Lamb who works in communications for the government while Laroque has been brewing for the past four years.
Brand new local breweries Outspoken Brewing, Northern Superior Brewing Company, and Union Jack Brewing also attended the event.
They said it was “a meeting of the three families.”
For those who wanted something stronger, Hearst’s Distillerie Rheault brought their unique Loon Vodka, which has been selling in LCBO’s for the past two years.
Owner Marcel Rheault described it as an ‘alpha-vodka’ that was rated one of the top ten Vodkas in the world at a competition in China.
Rheault said they make Loon with a traditional Russian four-stage purification process and that during the fourth stage the vodka is distilled with milk to remove negative ions and then infused with positive silver ions.
“Basically it means you don’t feel depressed two or three days after you drink it,” he said.
Hearst’s Fromagerie Kapuskoise also offered something interesting - traditional french-style cheese.
The business started just one year ago after Francois Nadeau went to France to study with the world’s best cheese makers.
He came back to Canada and opened up a business that they said has already been judged as making some of Canada’s best cheese and they’ve been told that they are on course to perhaps being the best.
Nadeau’s father Denis said the three main reasons why their cheese is so good is because it's air aged, the milk is single-sourced from high quality farms, and they don’t use modified milk ingredients.
Central City Brewers and Distillery from Surrey, BC presented their Hopping Mad Cider Radler, a unique play off of traditional ‘radlers’ which are lemonade or juice and beer mixes.
“Its kind of a craze right now. We used grapefruit juice and cider instead of the traditional beer to make something light and refreshing for the summer,” said their regional rep Mitch Kacsmar.
Barrie company CharGer Foods sold their Basil Bomb Hot Sauce - “a pesto hot sauce with ghost peppers”, Kenora’s Lake of the Woods Brewing presented their Big Timber IPA, and many other small companies were also present.
