Labatt

Jordanne Christie

30 Labatt

Introduction

Labatt is a beer brewing company that was created in London, ON and is Belgian owned. Labatt is Canadas biggest brewing company and is known for the creation of its famous Labatt Blue. Labatt beer has a clean refreshing taste with a hops aroma and a slightly sweet after taste. Labatt owns the title of the best-selling Canadian beer in the world. Labatt had won the silver medal in the International Lager category at the 1998 Brewing Industry International Awards (Labatt, 2022). The key main ingredients that are used to create Labatt beers are Hallertau hops, 2-row malted barley and pure Canadian barley (Wikipedia, 2021). Labatt has over 15 different types and styles of beer that range an ABV from as low as Labatt Lite with a 4% ABV to Labatt Blue Dry with a 10.1% ABV. Labatt is mainly a lager style beer with one exception being the Labatt 50, which is a blonde ale that contains all the distinguishing features of a true ale, including a good balance of dryness, complemented by a fruity taste and unique hop flavouring.

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Origin

Labatt was created by John Kinder Labatt in 1847. John kinder Labatt lived in London, Ontario and was an award-winning malting barley farmer and would sell his barley to local brewers. After so long of selling his barley, John Labatt had come up with the idea to buy a brewers inn keep and start the creation of Labatt. With his own brewery now, Labatt had stopped selling his barley and kept it to create his own beer, but still used traditional ingredients in the process. The annual production capacity was 400 barrels, in early 1853; after a year of trying new things, Labatt had increased his annual brewing capacity to 4,000 barrels, Labatt’s company had only held six employees at the time. Although this was an incredible jump in production, Labatt’s company remained a local operation. The company’s localness had soon changed, however, with the growing construction of the railroads. When the Great Western Railway had finally finished in late 1853 and connected London to other cities, John Labatt began shipping beer and ale to cities such as Montreal, Toronto, and the Maritimes (Labatt encyclopedia, 2019). Thanks to this railway being built, Labatt had soon become a national treasure to Canadian beer and caught the attention of other countries

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Tour of the current brewery

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjpjv7IlfH1AhUXFjQIHRwUAVwQtwJ6BAgHEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DMwqHVc8Zcy0&usg=AOvVaw27o7H7K6nJOl4tbJ2jU6MV

Key milestones

There was a magnitude of key milestones through out the history of Labatt, including the beer itself and how the company was run by the John Labatt family. one huge event that happened to help Labatt make his company more known throughout the country was back in 1899, the Labatt company had established their second brewery down in Toronto, Ontario (where the main headquarters lives today). In 1915, John Labatt the 2nd, who at the time was the current owner of Labatt, was one of the first companies to pay their employees during statutory holidays. In 1946, Labatt company Ltd. provided driver training to war amputees, continuing their unwavering support of veterans after WWII (Labattheritage, 2017). Labatt products feature a new family of labels as the old logos they had at the time were abandoned in 1954, which then paved the way for their famous, clean logos (Labatt heritage, 2017)