Name that beer: Nunavut’s first micro-brewery launches name contest

Here’s a preliminary design of what the Nunavut Brewery Co. Ltd.’s Iqaluit brewery could look like. (FILE PHOTO)

Nunavut, the beer, produced by the Ringnes brewery in Norway, honoured the Norwegian polar explorers of the 1800s. (FILE PHOTO)

If you’re at least 19 and live in Nunavut, you have until May 31 to suggest a name for the territory’s first locally-brewed beer.

Iqaluit’s Nunavut Brewing Co. Ltd. has just launched a competition to name its future beer.

You can enter the contest as often as you want and your suggested beer name should reflect the geographic location of the brewery and have an Arctic theme.

Winning entries will be posted on the company’s website at a later date with winners receiving $100, the company said in its contest pitch.

All of the Nunavut brewery’s beers will use water mainly from the Sylvia Grinnell River, located not far from its new microbrewery near Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park.

According to its website, the company’s product lines will include northern lagers and India pale ales, available in kegs and bottles.

The competition to name the beer comes two years after the Nunavut Liquor Licensing Board gave the official go-ahead for the Nunavut Brewing Co. to start brewing beer in Iqaluit.

“The Board believes that this decision to allow small scale craft brewing in Nunavut is in line with the 2012 recommendations of the liquor task force to reduce alcohol related harm by encouraging Nunavummiut to drink lower alcohol content beverages, such as beer and wine,” said the liquor board in 2015.

Last summer, the city also gave the company a green-light to produce beer after the Nunavut Impact Review Board had approved its proposal to use water from the Sylvia Grinnell River.

At a council meeting, brewery partner Ambrose Livingstone offered councillors details of the brewery’s proposed 609 square-metre facility, located on Iqaluit Lane near the entrance of the park, prompting Coun. Simon Nattaq to ask Livingstone if his company considered the consequences to fish populations in the Sylvia Grinnell River, where many local people fish in the rapids.

“We’d like to make enough beer to drain the river if we could,” Livingstone said, but “that’s not going to happen.

“There’s probably more water going over the falls in two minutes than we would take in two years.”

Once operational, Livingstone said the brewery could redirect, “hundreds of thousands of dollars leaving Iqaluit every year from purchasing beer from southern producers.”

“We have an opportunity to change that,” he said, adding that the brewery would create Iqaluit jobs as well.

The timing for the new beer’s launch will enable the city’s first beer and wine store, set to open in July 2017, to carry a local product.

But Nunavut has inspired brands of beer in the past.

A can for a beer made in 2006 in Norway, called Nunavut, featured a map of Nunavut’s High Arctic in gold and white, some cold-looking Arctic scenery at the bottom, and the logo “Nunavut—full-bodied and tasteful” on two sides.

A historical note at the bottom of the can says that the beer was produced by Ringnes brewery to honour its sponsorship of early Arctic expeditions:

“‘Ringnes Nunavut’ is inspired by the Ringnes founders’ sponsorship of the Norwegian polar expeditions more than 100 years ago. At that time, brave men were equipped with tasty, strong beer as part of their supplies as a reward for their bravery and daringness. Ringnes Nunavut is a full-bodied and tasteful beer rich in sweetness, low in fruitiness and with a well-balanced bitterness.”

You can find more information about the Nunavut Brewery’s competition here.