When the World’s Best Kriek isn’t a Kriek

We recently had the huge honor of our Fruitful Pursuits: Cherry being awarded the World’s Best Kriek at the World Beer Awards. We are honored to be amongst the notable breweries who have won this award in previous years, especially the Belgians. As far as beer competitions are concerned, the World Beer Awards are uniquely structured. Entries are first judged at the national level and then move on to be judged on the world stage against the best of the best from each country.

To our delight Fruitful Pursuits: Cherry won the award for the best Kriek at the Canadian national level as well as the international level for best Kriek in the world. 

We have a funny relationship with cherry beers. Our first cherry beer was the Royal Cherry Raspberry – a combination of whole cherries and raspberries from Steve and Dan’s Fresh BC Fruit. Head Brewer and Blender, Doug, prefers the combination of the two fruits and didn’t actually want to make a pure cherry beer, not only out of preference, but because everyone does it. It’s almost a cliché for anyone making beers inspired by Belgian Lambic breweries. Due to a host of circumstance Doug had cherries destined for another batch of the Royal, that didn’t pan out and decided to make Fruitful Pursuits: Cherry instead. The results are delightful, even becoming one of Doug’s favourite beers we produce. Around the brewery it’s commonly said that Fruitful Pursuits: Cherry truly carries cherry character.

So why don’t we call this a Kriek? As with all things, it’s complicated. We’re not shy about explaining that we use techniques and methods directly inspired by Lambic brewing in Belgium. Our base spontaneous beer is even made with the same techniques as the Lambic beer made in Belgium, where Doug learned the methods when working at Cantillon. We’ve even gone so far as to design and build our brewhouse based on the historical turbid mashing brewhouses used by lambic brewers. We respect the history of the techniques, methods, and practices in our day to day production but that is where we draw the line for our inspiration. 

The main reason we don’t call Fruitful Pursuits: Cherry a Kriek is out of respect for our peers in Belgium. It’s their traditional term, and not ours.

On a couple of occasions over the years the Belgian Lambic brewers and blenders tried to get legal protection for their traditional terms such as, Lambic, Gueuze, and Kriek, but were met with only limited success. They weren’t successful as they were not able to act in true concert like the makers of Champagne to protect their historical terms and brands. 

Kriek is traditionally made with cherries from the Schaarbeek area just northeast of Brussels – so this is the truest expression of these historical beers. These days Belgian Lambic producers use a range of different cherries, however many of the producers still make some limited runs of Kriek using exclusively Schaarbeek cherries. So, if you can get your hands on one of them it’s an amazing opportunity to get a little piece of history.

We certainly don’t want to sound like we’re ungrateful for winning the Best Kriek in the World from the World Beer Awards – we’re incredibly proud of the award and are honored to be recognized. If one described the category as being a range of Spontaneous beers using whole cherries, that would be dead-on for what we made. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a Kriek.