The brewery opened in the summer of 2022.
Under a year and a half later, they have created Canada’s highest rated beer.
Prince George’s Deadfall Brewing has just won the entire Canada Beer Cup, their Basal Brown Ale has been crowned the best craft beer in the nation.
“It has been a long week, I am still in disbelief,” Brandon Baerwald, the head brewer and co-owner of Deadfall, told My PG Now. “I usually enter competitions because you get judged very well. I was looking for feedback – how do I make a better beer? Apparently, this one, I can’t,” he said with a laugh. “It came as a complete surprise.”
Brandon said the American Brown Ale “has little to no yeast character,” unlike an English Brown. “It is all about the malt and the hops. It is the perfect balance of the roasty, chocolatey, almost smokey dark malt, then the hops come in, some of that pine, a little floral. It is very well balanced.”
Brandon said he was unable to attend the Beer Cup in Niagara in person, having just been to the BC Beer awards the week prior – where they also won a gold prize for their specialty Cold IPA.
The Beer Cup organizers asked Brandon and his wife Erin to sent in a video instead, where they asked them to say something along the lines of “I am thankful to have won the Canadian Beer Cup.”
“I was like, there is no way. I woke up in a cold sweat that night and [told myself] ‘no no no, they ask everyone, and just release the one who won.'”
The next day, Brandon asked for clarification and received an email back that he said “basically said ‘you idiot, you won the Canada Beer Cup.'”
Not only did the beer win gold, it won gold by a unanimous vote.
“The organizer and show chair said in all the years of judging, that hasn’t happened ever, that the best of show decision was unanimous. It is pretty amazing,” Erin said.
Over 1200 beers were submitted from over 250 breweries across Canada and blindly tested by 41 international, national, and regional judges.
Brandon and Erin Co-own Deadfall Brewing, which they opened in June 2022.
Erin said they only have five or six total staff members, only brew 700 liters at a time, and normally only distribute as far as Williams Lake from the back of Brandon’s Tacoma.
“Winning this, being a new, really small, hyper-local brewery is lifechanging – probably, hopefully, maybe?” Erin said.
“My endgame was never to be a big brewery,” Brandon explained. “I like the small brewery feel… we are focusing on northern BC right now. It was never meant to be big and widely distributed – I don’t want to be in other provinces.”
“It is teeny tiny in [our taproom],” Erin added. “It fits 30 people, you can see Brandon brewing, that is what we like. We want people to be able to interact and see and be able to ask questions.”
She said it is easy to tell who new customers are because there is always a look of surprise when they come through the doors.
“It is that feeling of flipping a log and finding something magical underneath,” she said, explaining that was part of the inspiration for the name Deadfall. “We have made family in the year and some that we have been open. We have some ride or die fans now, people have been regulars since the first day.”
They said the small and cozy feel reminds them of the days when they brewed their own beer at home on the back deck with their friends – one of these backyard specialties would become the Basal Brown.
“This is the recipe I have been honing for 15 to 20 years now,” Brandon said.
The couple had their 10th anniversary this year. Erin said the Basil Brown was the beer they drank with their friends at the celebration – they even marinated the dinner in it.
It was also the very first beer brewed at Deadfall.
Despite all this, it was nearly cut from the core menu.
“I almost dropped it,” Brandon admitted with a smile. “Before the winning batch we were looking at sales, and were like ‘nobody like brown ales.’ I said ‘I am going to give this one more shot, I am going to tweak it a little bit and try and put it over the top.'”
They proudly said removing the beer from their taproom is no longer on the table.
You can find out more about Deadfall Brewing here.
Something going on in the Prince George area you think people should know about?
Send us a news tip by emailing [email protected].
