Platform 13 Winners Announced!

St. Thomas, ON

Railway City Brewing announced the winner’s of this year’s Platform 13 Home Brew competition. Last year, the winning beer was brewed featuring locally grown Beets and Honey. The overall winner of the Platform home brew competition receives a cash prize and the opportunity to brew alongside Railway City brewers. The full size brew is then made available to both retail customers along with local bars and restaurants.  The label design features the signature of both the home brewer and the Railway City Brewing team.

In the end they had a wide variety of entries from across Ontario. While many submissions came from the London region, many came in from the Windsor/Kingsville and Sarnia region and some as far away as Ottawa. Styles ranged from simple ales, lagers & wheats, to dark stouts and porters. All were extremely pleased with this year’s submissions.

Railway City pulled together a team of home brew shop owners, accomplished brewers, and qualified judges. The team of judges reviewed each beer and rated them according to their balance, quality and overall enjoyability.

What started out as a competition to judge the summer’s Best Beer, it quickly came to be just to recognize the best beer. While it might have been easier to select the best beer for the summer months, there were just too many great beers that needed to be recognized.

And the winners are:

First Place: IPA, brewed by Ryan Harrison from St.Thomas
Second Place: Vanilla Stout, brewed by Ryan Armstrong and Dennis Muzujlo from London
Third Place: Mango Saison, brewed by John Jenkinson & Reuven Brandt from London

Although all the judges were impressed with the overall quality of all the beers entered, one of the beers stood out amongst all of them. The IPA, was chosen for its overall flavour balance and enjoyability and all the judges could see themselves drinking more of it!
The IPA was brewed by Ryan Harrison of St.Thomas.

When asked why Ryan brewed this beer he told Railway City: “I never liked beer growing up, but one day I tried craft beer and fell in love, then I decided to try and brew my own.”  Ryan also commented that “I find IPA’s on the market too dry, which lead me to malt it up! Commercial IPA’s are more bitter than hop”.
It is a delicious IPA that will be brewed later this summer and should be available in early September.

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