GOLD – Best Fruit Beer // Vélo Hazy APA with Lemon Juice
GOLD – Best West Coast IPA // Greg IPA
GOLD – Best Specialty IPA // Juxtapose Wild IPA
GOLD – Best Sour Ale // Nectarous Dry Hopped Sour
GOLD – Best Collab Beer // Pils Pack 2
GOLD – Best Food Program
SILVER – Brewery of the Year
SILVER – Beer of the Year // Nectarous Dry Hopped Sour
SILVER – Best Light Lager // Hüftgold German-Style Pilsner
SILVER – Best Belgian-Style Ale // Triplicity Belgian-Style Tripel
SILVER – Best Imperial Ale // Boreas 2021 Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout
SILVER – Best Low-Alcohol Beer // Sour Weisse
SILVER – Best Tasting Room
How can such a good brewery just keep getting better?
Four Winds Brewing has already won so many accolades over the years, including Brewery of the Year at the 2015 Canadian Brewing Awards and Beer of the Year in 2016 (for Nectarous), along with too many BC Beer Awards to mention here. And just look at the long list of Growlies above. Maybe they’ve earned the privilege to slow down and polish their trophies.
Nope. I visited the brewery recently and I spotted some of the trophies up on a dusty shelf in the corner of the tasting room. They had clearly been admired and then put away. Time to get busy again. Time to try something new.
This year, the big new beer they brewed was Boreas, their first bourbon barrel aged stout, and, of course, they nailed it. Next year, we might be raving about Opulence, a foeder-aged Farmhouse Ale conditioned with Pinot Noir grapes and packaged in a clear glass bottle to show off its gorgeous pink colour. And the year after that they’ll probably be opening their second location in Southlands.
I can’t wait to see what’s next. —Joe Wiebe
