Moncton Brewery Takes Gold In National Beer Competition
MONCTON — Tire Shack Brewing Company has won national-level recognition for its most popular, and most bitter, beer.
“We were pretty excited about that one,” said Tire Shack co-owner Jerrica Kennedy of the brewery’s win at the inaugural Canada Beer Cup.
The brewery won the award for its Killed by Death IPA, a 10 percent alcohol beer that customers demanded back after its initial release, intended to be a one-time thing last Halloween.
“It was icing on the cake because we originally brewed it as a Halloween beer last year and thought ‘you know, we can just make it every Halloween, it would be a lot of fun.’ It’s a strong beer, with a menacing label but people loved it,” said Tire Shack co-owner Alan Norman.
“When we stopped making it, people were like ‘where’s Killed by Death?’ So it’s a staple and popular in the brewery.”
Norman told Huddle the win is an especially proud feather in their caps because it was in a competitive category, with the great popularity of the IPA style of beer.
Kennedy and Norman were chosen from a pool of hundreds of other brewers from across Canada in the same category.
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Hosted by the Canadian Craft Brewers Association – a body that represents the interest of more than 1,200 craft breweries across the nation — the Canada Beer Cup is on a similar scale to the Canadian Brewing Awards and Conference.
The gold Tire Shack won for Killed by Death at the Canada Beer Cup is the brewery’s fifth high-level award for their brews. At the Canadian Brewing Awards and Conference, It clinched gold for its Helles Yeah! beer.
“We actually won gold at the [Canadian Brewing Awards and Conference] twice and gold at the U.S. Brewing Awards twice. So, you know, it’s great just for our confidence that you can come to Tire Shop and you’re literally going be drinking some of the best beer you’re going to find in North America,” said Norman.
The Canada Beer Cup, hosted in Vancouver, featured a panel of expert judges from across North America and Europe who judged beers in 70 categories.
“It’s a taste-testing by master taste-testers who are looking for a very particular set of things with each beer. The IPA category has this massive set of rules that the beer has to fall into,” said Norman.
“It puts Moncton on the map and gives us a lot of cred in the industry. It’s pretty amazing.”
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This award comes at a time when Tire Shack, a finalist in the recent Chamber of Commerce for Greater Moncton’s Business Excellence Awards, is in the middle of a 5,600-square-foot expansion to its home at 190 John Street.
Kennedy and Norman told Huddle about a year ago that the expansion will feature a four-season rooftop patio and rentable community space.
“That is going to bring us up to about 10,000 square feet, total, when it’s all done,” said Norman, noting they broke ground on the expansion in September.
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The brewery, which employs between 20 and 25 people, is expected to finish up the expansion in April 2023.
Kennedy said the recognition on different fronts is overwhelming and rewarding.
“We’ve been completely floored with the amount of support that we’re getting from the entire community and our peers in the Moncton entrepreneurial community,” she said.
Tire Shack Brewing was established in the site of a former auto garage near downtown Moncton that Kennedy and Norman had renovated in 2019.
The brewery will soon be releasing two new beers that are the product of local collaboration.
These include a beer brewed with 20 kilograms of donuts baked by Halo Donuts to celebrate Tire Shack’s three-year anniversary, and a beer brewed with 150 litres of apple pie flavoured ice cream from Lost and Found Ice Cream.
Tire Shack brews using a 15-hectoliter system that can produce up to 3,000 litres of beer per day.
Sam Macdonald is a Huddle reporter in Moncton. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].