Muskoka is winning national accolades for its flavour and taste.

The Bracebridge-based Lakes of Muskoka Cottage Brewery captured two gold awards with their first-ever entry at the fifth annual Canadian Brewing Awards.

In the category of Wheat Beer German Style Hefewizer, the Muskoka Hefewissbier won and the Muskoka Lager took top prize in the category of North American-Style Lager.

Owner and brewmaster Gary McMullen, who was unable to attend the awards held in Vaughan on Nov. 22, was proud of this national recognition.

“What I’m most happy with is that we won for our Hefewissbier, our premium offering, but we also won for our Muskoka lager, which is our workhorse beer. It’s our beer for Muskoka.”

The Hefewissbier beer was launched in spring of 2006 and was the company’s first foray into producing an organic product. It took several months to develop and get to market.

“We’re really happy to win on both sides of the spectrum so we’re not sacrificing quality in our lager. We make a gold medal-winning lager, and it’s priced fantastically locally,” he said. “That’s what I was most happy about was that we were able to win in a really highly specialized category, but then win a gold in a very crowded category. The North American lager category would have had the most entries of all the categories.”

The event doesn’t reveal how many beers were in competition for the title, but giant beer producer Molson Canadian captured that category a few years ago.

Things couldn’t be going better for the local brewery, McMullen said, adding the company is at full capacity producing close to 3,000 cases of 24 beers a week. This time last year the company was producing half of that total per week.

Not new to winning, the brewery has won awards at such shows as the Toronto Wine and Cheese Show, and best in show award at the Toronto Festival of Beer, to name a few.

The brewery is planning on relocating within 18 months somewhere in Bracebridge. They hope to find a larger location to enable greater production efficiency.

Although his organic beer is directed more to the Toronto market, he said the win for his lager is a testament to the dedication and focus he has made to the local market.

“Our challenge here is that we want to be Muskoka’s beer and want to sell most of our beer in Muskoka,” he said, adding this win is for Muskoka. “We’re really happy about that and we appreciate the support of all of Muskoka,” he said.