Coulee Brew Co. continuing to grow after earning gold at 2018 Canadian Brewing Awards

Coulee was awarded gold for their Coalbanks Porter beer in the Porter category, and their Red Coat Trail Ale took gold in the North America Style Amber Lager.

These are the first awards that Coulee has won since their inception.

Chief Executive Officer Esmarilin Rauda says it was really great that one of their seasonal beers took that award.

“It’s one of the more prestigious brewing awards as all breweries across Canada, small or large, can enter it and there are more than 55 categories available. Our head brewer, Sean Cormican, enters the recipes because he has to list the flavour profile, the category of the beer and things like that. He does all the submissions and enters them into the correct categories,” Rauda said.

Both beers are fan favourites and the Red Coat Trail Ale is available year-round, while the Coalbanks Porter started as a seasonal brew, but has recently joined the ranks as a year-round offering due to popularity.

The Red Coat has aromas of caramel and North American Hop varieties that make up the nose of the amber coloured ale.

Flavours of rich dark fruits and hops interplay until a moderately dry toasty finish.

Coalbanks Porter is dark as a Coalbanks mine shaft, with a minecart-full of intense sensory triggers that brewers say will satisfy both the beer enthusiasts and coal porters seeking refreshment after a hard day in the mines.

Non-bitter, dark chocolate and coffee take the forefront and continue into the aftertaste without distraction.

Coulee currently boasts six core beers, as well as one or two seasonal beers at a time, and Rauda says this time around they may have entered all six into the competition.

“I think in this case just because the Coalbanks seasonal was new they thought to enter it, and we also have a bourbon Belgium style series that we have that was quite popular that might be brought back in the fall.”

“We will always have our core line, but now that I’m starting to work on strategy as well we’re going to work on doing a seasonal beer every quarter. So, we’ll have about four different seasonal beers and we’re also looking at adding rotating one-off keg beers as well,” Rauda added.

Right now, the core and the occasional seasonal beers are the only ones available but going forward what Rauda wants to do is give Cormican more creative ability to do something different.

“Something you may not have seen from Coulee is any fruit beer, or things like that because I wouldn’t say craft beer drinkers are super loyal,” she continued. “What you want now at the market is the newest and best thing, regardless of where its brewed, whoever has the newest trendy beer that’s the one people will try.”

Earlier this week, Coulee Brew Co. installed two new 90 hectoliter tanks giving them the capacity needed to expand which is going to increase their capacity, and give them more ability to increase production, get more creative and do those one-off beers.

Coulee Brew Co. has grown to a point where they have about five smaller contracted brewing companies with them right now.

“Another thing we’re doing is adding a lab back there to help with our quality control. When you have someone else brewing your beer, and you can’t always be there to monitor how we’re brewing it, people will have the safety net of knowing that we have a lab now for quality control and analysis,” Rauda added.

The aluminum tariffs from the United States has contributed to an alumni shortage, but Rauda says luckily, they have a good relationship with West Coast Canning and Cantastic who have been great making sure they have what they need when it comes to beer cans.

The process of creating a Coulee Brew Co. beer after the brewing stage is bringing in the blank cans to their warehouse and then using shrink sleeves overtop.

“Some breweries do printed cans, but here and all the contracts that we do, are all shrink sleeves. The shrink sleeves are done at an outside place and then sent here.”

“We send off the design and they’ll send it back, and the process takes about six weeks. That’s why planning has become so important I would say, even for seasonal beers,” Rauda said, adding they have to think about what they’re doing over the course of the year right now in order to have all of the designs in place.

Coulee Brew. Co products can be found at about 460 locations across Alberta, and those numbers have been growing each year.

“Our sales forecasts have definitely increased from this time last year, so I’m excited moving forward because we’re going to refresh our brand itself as well.”

Asked whether that would be a logo change or anything along those lines, Rauda says it’s going to be more like a facelift to the current brand.

Coulee Brew Co. brewed its first beer in April of 2016, and now have an online beer finder to help people in Alberta find Coulee products close to them.

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

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Coulee Brew Co. continuing to grow after earning gold at 2018 Canadian Brewing Awards

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