Manual Labour Beer Co. nabs two provincial awards
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One of Strathcona County’s newest breweries is already becoming a big name in the sector.
Having only opened its doors in May, Manual Labour Beer Co., located at 280 Portage Close in Sherwood Park, has taken home two medals from the Alberta Beer Awards — gold for its brown ale, ‘Born Ready’, and silver for its dark lager, ‘Dogs are Barking’.
Richard McLeod, president and head brewer at Manual Labour Beer Co. said he is thrilled that two recipes have already been recognized.
“It is pretty cool, given that we’ve only been open for five months,” explained McLeod.
“The brown ale is the one I’ve brewed the most and I’ve worked on it my whole brew career. With the dark lager, I brew that one time and it turned out great, so the recipe stuck. This was our first competition, and it feels great and was a big surprise to be honest. We didn’t expect to win anything, but it feels great and we’re really excited and proud of what we’ve done.”
The Alberta Beer Awards started in 2017. This year’s ceremony received more than 500 entries in more than 460 beer categories.
McLeod noted that it was a real honour to be chosen in two categories.
“There is no prize money, but we get plaques to be displayed in the brewery. We are also going to display the gold medal on the label of our brown ale and the silver medal on the label of our dark lager,” he said. “We do have a couple of other beers we didn’t have ready, but I feel are a really good quality and we’ll be entering those in the future. One of the national competitions we were late getting in to but we’re going to get into that next year, and I believe there is another national award in May that we’ll be entering some beers into.”
The win has attracted more attention for the local company.
“Our social media is blowing up, and a lot of people that pay attention to the awards have been reaching out and we have seen a bit of a bump in our distribution since the awards,” he said.
McLeod hopes beer drinkers give his two award-winning brews a try in Strathcona County or try the beers he thinks will be winning awards at the next competition.
“The dark lager was a summer beer and we don’t have it on tap anymore, but we have a few cans left. The brown ale is one of our flagship beers and is around all year long,” he said.
The brewery creates more than 24,000 litres of beer each week. Currently, Manual Labour Beer Co. is on sale at 122 liquor stores across the province.
The brewery also nearly received another big award at the event.
“We finished a close second for new brewery of the year as well, so we were pretty pumped about that,” he said. “Sherwood Park has been great to us and the community has been very welcoming. It is part of the reason we’ve done so well.”
McLeod said these awards are great to receive in the first-year operation, but he plans on entering his brews in lots of upcoming competitions and taking home more medals.
You can find out more about the local brewery at manual-labour.ca.
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