Niagara College student brewers bringing unique craft creations to their CarnivALE Beer Fest Saturday

The thing about the Niagara College Teaching Brewery is that it’s to style.

More specifically, their Beer 101 products available to the public, are exactly to style. That means simply, when they brew, say, a Porter, it tastes exactly as a Porter is intended to. Same with their Bock or IPA or Pilsner.

Once the students graduate, when they land at a brewery, that’s when they can start tinkering with lactose, fruit purees, spices and the like. The Teaching Brewery sends them out knowing exactly how a beer should taste at its core.

However, at the end of a student’s run in the Teaching Brewing, they are offered a chance to tinker with the original beer recipes at a unique event.

Dubbed CarnivALE, running Saturday (August 13) from 4 to 7:30 pm, the event will showcase the unique craft beer creations the graduating students in the Brewmaster and Brewery Operations Management program have come up with as part of their final term project.

Some two dozen beers will be on tap for this “Project Brew” competition in the Niagara-on-the-Lake courtyard at the Daniel J. Patterson campus.

Project Brew faculty lead April Tyrrell said the students chose the theme because, like a carnival, it’s a fun-themed event.

“The students liked the idea of a fun atmosphere and return to a full-sized Project Brew that includes carnival games, a dunk tank, and carnival food,” Tyrrell said.

“It’s a carnival theme with carnival food to go with it: popcorn, Pogos, fries, deep fried Oreos, and donuts.”

Brewmaster student Adam Marshall is looking forward to debuting two of his beers: ‘Suffig,’ a German pilsner, and his Belgian Witbier ‘Mouthcloud.’ The latter is a spiced beer with coriander seed, curacao orange peel, dried chamomile flowers and some bergamot extract.

“I had the opportunity to acquire some coriander fresh from Bangalore when some family came to visit,” the Welland resident said.

“This is a classic ingredient in a Belgian Witbier, so I decided that I wanted to put it to good use. Project Brew is an opportunity to experiment in a relatively low-risk environment. Not often in the industry can you attempt such a small batch brew and have the opportunity to really throw whatever you want into the mix.”

With only nine students competing, each had a chance to create two beers each, rather than the traditional one.

Graduate Tyler Lefrancois’ two Project Brew entries are a Sahti called ‘Titania Sahti Sour’ and ‘Oberon Prime,’ a Berliner Weisse.

Likewise, Courtney Nuttley will be entering her Schwarzbier ‘Lemon Espresso Lager’ and Canadian IPA ‘The Village’ at CarnivALE.

Tickets to CarnivALE are $20 each and are available now through the Project Brew website. Guests must be 19 years of age or older and show valid ID.

Admission includes a sample glass and four drink tickets; additional drink tickets can be purchased at the event for $2 each. A selection of food prepared by the Canadian Food and Wine Institute’s Culinary students will also be available.

All proceeds from Project Brew benefit the Matt Soos Memorial Scholarship, in memory of Matt Soos, who graduated from the Brewmaster program in 2015.

The scholarship was established by Railway City Brewing, where Soos worked at the time of his passing shortly after graduating from Niagara College.