When Wellington Brewery couldn’t give the community a party for their 35th anniversary, they created something for them instead.
The brewery produced a four-pack beer and meal recipes designed specifically for each beer. A portion of the proceeds from the four-pack beer go directly to SaveHospitalityCa, an organization raising funds for the hospitality industry.
“We loved the idea because especially when we go into the second wave, we love the idea of something people can take home and do for entertainment and continue to support the hospitality industry even if they don't want to go out,” said Karyn Boscariol, community outreach coordinator at Wellington Brewery.
“Because COVID-19 was happening and lots was happening with the hospitality industry, we decided to donate partial proceeds from all of the sales of this beer to savehospitality.ca.”
To create four unique beers by a different brewery each, Wellington Brewery paired up with four original Ontario craft brewers, Nickel Brook Brewing Co., Great Lakes Brewery, Cameron's Brewing Company and Muskoka Brewery.
Each beer was paired with a meal recipe created specifically to complement that beer as part of an ongoing recipe series the company has been participating in for the past year.
“We have been collaborating with different establishments and chefs and we thought because we have this four-pack, let's do a recipe series with The Neighbourhood Group because they have four different restaurants,” said Boscariol.
She gives the example of the poached pear recipe where the chef poaches the pear in a tart blueberry and pan fused beer. The poaching process allows the liquid to soak into the pear and the leftover liquid is used for the vinaigrette.
“It just has this really nice tanginess to it. It’s a really hearty salad to eat. It’s a salad that would get you through the day,” said Boscariol.
Recipes created in collaboration with The Neighbourhood Group which includes recipes from chefs at The Wooly Pub, Borealis Grille & Bar, Miijidaa café + bistro and Park Grocery deli & bar can be viewed here.
“It just so turns out that they each sort of chose a different course so If you wanted to recreate all four courses, you would have a salad, a soup, a main and a dessert.”
Boscariol said Guelph is a very supportive city for companies and organizations to collaborate on projects together.
“We just saw how hard that industry was being hit by COVID-19. Most of them were shut down for numerous months,” said Boscariol.
“We wanted to somehow support as best we could with this initiative and make sure all these amazing places that we provide food to and that we love to go to had a future you know and weren’t going to shut down.”
