Skout’s ‘Lights Out Porter’ wins silver at Canada Beer Cup
November 17, 2025, 10:37 am
Nicole Taylor, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Skout Brewery of Moosomin earned national recognition recently, taking home a silver medal at the Canada Beer Cup in Quebec City. The brewery won in the American Porter and Stout category for its Lights Out Porter, one of more than 1,800 beers entered by 300 breweries across Canada.
For head brewer and co-owner Aaron Grandguillot, the medal represents a milestone for the brewery, which opened in April 2024. He first developed the recipe long before Skout opened.
“How this beer started was when I was in brewing school,”Grandguillot said. “We had to choose a style of beer to make as a project, so this was one of the first recipes I ever wrote by myself. I started with this one because I thought it looked interesting.”
As for the name, “It’s Lights Out because it’s dark,” he says. “Turn the lights out, it gets dark, and also it’s lights out because it tastes good. Lights out.”
Naming beers at Skout is a shared effort between Aaron and his wife, taproom manager and co-owner Gena Shepard.
“When I come up with a new recipe we start playing around with ideas,” he said. “Sometimes we come up with a list and then whittle it down, sometimes something just strikes us as being a fit name for the beer. It’s always a collaboration between Gena and I on how to come up with the names.
“The tricky part about naming a craft beer is that there are a lot of craft breweries that have also come up with a lot of names. We try to obviously not steal anyone else’s name. We also try to keep our names somewhat close to our overall brand. Skout Brewing we came up with and it was more like being outdoorsy, scouting around. Some of our names are earthy—Cloudy Skies, Stargazer—or we have local names like Straight Out of Fleming, Pipestone, and Mooseberry. We try to keep it local and within our brand.
“Sometimes we come up with names like Knuckleballer. That beer gave me a lot of trouble when I was making it. It was like trying to hit a knuckleball so that’s why we named it that.
“I’ll make the beer and then as it’s fermenting we’ll start to be able to taste what it is like. I always have an intention of what a beer will taste like but until you make it, you don’t know for sure. Son of a Biscuit, we came up with that name because it’s a little bit biscuit-y tasting.”
Skout entered five beers in this year’s Canada Beer Cup.
“We entered the national competition for craft breweries in Canada, and we had entered five of our beers into it,” Grandguillot said. “The benefit is not just winning medals, even though it’s amazing when it does happen. You also get scorecards for all the beers you enter, and those scorecards are done by professional judges.
“They have high-ranking beer judges who basically study beer from around the world, know what it tastes like and know what it should taste like depending on the style. When it comes to a competition, when they are tasting your beer they are filling out a scorecard and giving you feedback.
“So the benefit of entering the competition is getting the professional feedback. We entered five beers, only one of them won a medal, but we got excellent feedback on all five beers. All five of our beers were judged to be very good. All five of our beers were judged to be very good for their style. And every beer style has its own parameters.
“They were all judged to be good but only our Lights Out Porter made it to a medal round. All the judging is done blindly. The judges don’t know what beer they are tasting or where it’s from. With that said, we could enter the same beer in the competition next year. It could win gold or more likely it won’t win a medal at all. The competition is fierce and because it’s judged blindly, there is no favoritism at all. It’s based on the judges around the table that day, how they are tasting the beer, and for this competition they obviously liked ours.”
The event gathered breweries from every province and territory. “The event was in Quebec City. Three hundred breweries entered, they submitted a total of over 1,800 beers in more than 50 categories. A lot of the medals were won by breweries in British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario. Every province and territory was represented in the competition.”
Skout Brewery has now been open for about a year and a half.
“We have been open for a year and a half,” he said. “It really comes down to your skills as a brewer. If you make a good beer, it doesn’t matter how big your brewery is. Some of the biggest breweries might not make the best beers, and some of the small breweries might make excellent beers, but because they are small, not many people get to taste them.
“For me, when I approach making beer, I always try to make it the best I can using as many local ingredients as I can. So that is something that sets us apart, is using the local hops, using local malted barley. So that could be what helps a smaller brewery versus a larger brewery that might only be able to use large-scale ingredient suppliers. Not as unique ingredients.
“Speaking for the hops farm that my wife’s family runs, they produce excellent hops in my opinion, but they wouldn’t be able to supply hops for Coors Light because they don’t make enough hops. So Coors Light can only source their hops from really large-scale hop farms, where I can source from wherever, so I also have the chance to be a little bit more creative because it is just me here. I can make whatever beer I want.
“I try to listen to feedback from the community. This beer has actually won me a medal before. When I was in college, it was one of the first recipes I had written. It was submitted to the U.S. College Open when I was in brewing school, and it won then. I submitted this same beer to last year’s Prairie Beer Awards and that was a competition for Saskatchewan and Manitoba breweries. It didn’t medal, but we had also only been open for a few weeks so I hadn’t kind of perfected it on our system yet. But it is better now than it was then, but who knows if it’ll win a medal ever again. It’s hard to say.”
Skout, like many small breweries, operates at capacity.
“There are some challenges,” Grandguillot said. “We are only so big, so in terms of scaling up production, I can only fit so much beer in our tanks, and we are lucky in that we are able to sell most of the beer that I make. The trick will be in being able to brew more often.
“We started expanding our market into Regina and Moose Jaw and are looking to expand into Saskatoon just to get our beer around more of the province. The local market has been incredibly supportive. People seem to like our beer, they support us very well, but there are also only so many people in this area. I could keep making beer for people in this area but if we want to expand our market, I need to make more beer because people around here are drinking most of what I make.”
Grandguillot said his influences come from experience rather than imitation.
“Before we opened a brewery, my wife and I enjoyed going to craft breweries, and that is how we got interested in the industry in the first place, so I’m sure there has been influences along the way. But I really admire what a lot of breweries in the province do. I think Saskatchewan makes a lot of good quality beer. You can go to any craft brewery in the province and you’re going to find something good. I am happy to be among them but in terms of aspiration, I try to make what I think is good and what the people around here will like and we just try to do our best that way.”
Winning silver came as a surprise to Grandgullot.
“It’s a pretty big deal to win a national award, it’s something I didn’t really expect,” he said. “You always hope when you enter a competition like this, but really I was just looking for professional feedback more than anything. To win it makes me feel good about the choice to quit my previous career and start a brewery. The national recognition shows that I’m okay at this, it’s not easy to get, we might never get it again, and that’s okay because it’s tough to stand out in Canada.
“In terms of our social media, just shortly after the competition, it has gotten a lot of attention. More than our posts usually do. Hopefully people are willing to give the beer a try now. A lot of people look at a porter and think ‘that is pretty dark, I don’t want to try that.’ You either like something or you don’t, that’s why we offer a whole variety, because if somebody comes in here and they are not sure about craft beer, I’m sure I have something that you’ll like because we have a wide variety of style.
“We are really proud. The award ceremony was in Quebec City. We received private texts from other people in the industry I know, a lot of people are happy for us and have given us congratulations. I was probably the most stunned, me and my wife. It does feel pretty nice, I can’t lie, I’m pretty proud of this beer. I always thought it was good. We have got some people who come regularly and that’s all they get because they think it’s pretty good too. I’m happy to prove them right. I brew the Lights Out probably third or fourth most [popular], after Blonde Ale, Snowdrift Golden Ale, and usually our rotating IPAs.”
Last week, Granguillot was back to work at the brewery.
“Today I am back to work making more beer but I guess we just get back to work and hopefully new people will come try it,” he said.
“Lights Out Porter takes about three weeks,” he added. “I will spend a day brewing it, and then it sits in the fermenter and ages for roughly two weeks, and then I need to carbonate it and package it so it takes anywhere from 18 to 21 days from start to finish for it to be ready to get.
“Gena runs the front, I run the back, so I am the only one who touches the beer. I would like some help sometimes but the reality is our size, it’s just me. Maybe that will change, if anybody is interested in brewing, come talk to me.
“The Lights Out Porter will soon be available in liquor stores. We are really happy to get the recognition. We work really hard at this so it’s nice to get external recognition. We are proud of what we do but it’s nice to get the recognition from elsewhere. I would encourage people to keep coming out to Skout to try the beer, and thanks to everyone for getting us this far.” Tweet
