The 2024 Canadian Brewing Awards & Conference (CBAC) was held last weekend in Hamilton Ontario. The CBAC is a Craft Brewing Industry industry event for "two days of seminars, workshops, fun-filled networking and a celebration of brewing excellence." And if you're wondering, yes it's as much fun as you would expect a Craft Brewing event would be.
I'm grateful and very proud to report that Grimross Brewing received two awards this year, Gold in the Oatmeal Stout category for Diggin' Oat Stout, and Silver in the English Style India Pale Ale for Maritime IPA. As much as I am excited about this recognition among over 1000 fantastic Craft Breweries across Canada, my purpose on this post is to recognize the team at Grimross.
Grimross Brewing will celebrate 11 years operating in Fredericton, New Brunswick on July, 2024. We started out literally in the basement of our house. We had the first ever licensed brewery in a house in New Brunswick. In those early days I was a one man show. From cleaning to recipe development, to brewing, cellaring, packaging, sales, distribution, licensing, everything! The only business activity I didn't take care of was HR, because there were no employees.
Grimross grew quickly. After emerging from our basement, it became a family affair. My wife Dawn handled financial matters, cleaning, sanitizing and inspecting bottles for packaging. Our daughters Madison and Rhys both helped with packaging, retail, production and whatever we needed help with. Both Madison and Rhys rose to supervisory roles very quickly.
With growth came the need for more help and as a result, more people. What was a one man operation, grew to a family operation and has now grown to over 20 employees at times. This growth has been both exciting and fulfilling and difficult and frustrating.
This brings me to the purpose for this post... our people, our team. I no longer mash in, transfer, package or distribute product. We have an amazing and highly skilled team who make the beer. My focus and my role have changed, but my passion and leadership for the Grimross Mission remains intact. Over the years I am proud to report that Grimross has faired well in industry recognition as a top rated and award winning, quality brewery. As you might imagine, it's difficult to stay at the top of your game while you grow and build a team at the same time.
When I told our Head of Brewery Operations, Myles MacKenzie, about the Gold and Silver medals, his first comment was about the team. The Brewer who developed one of the recipes (Ryan), our chief of Packaging and Cellaring (Sebastian), our head of Quality Management (Devin), our General Manager (Michele) and (Jarett) in Logistics. His comment was that it was all of us who were responsible for this recognition. I was so proud those were his first words!
Grimross is no longer just about the founders, Stephen and Dawn and our daughters, Madison and Rhys, it's now a much bigger family. And our extended Grimross family even extends out into our Community of Fredericton and across New Brunswick. I could not be more proud of all of the people who are Grimross. Now let me go wipe up my tears of emotion ;-)
Cheers,
Stephen Dixon
Founder, Grimross Brewing
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