Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 2

Deep Roots Distillery Inc. (DRD Inc.) is an organic fruit farm and craft distillery located in Warren Grove, Prince Edward Island. They are best known for their many varieties of fruit infused distilled spirits including Maple Liqueur, Camerise, Island Tide, and Spiced Apple. In the early 90s, Deep Roots Distillery began as a roadside apple store. In 2005, DRD Inc. was certified as a fully organic operation. In 2012, the company transitioned from being an apple retailer into value added alcohol products such as spirits and has been flourishing ever since. Deep Roots Distillery has worked with Holland College on several applied research and development projects in the past. DRD Inc is looking to build on that relationship by collaborating with Canada's Smartest Kitchen on a new multi-year R&D partnership. Canada's Smartest Kitchen (CSK), the food product research and development center, co-located within Holland College's Culinary Institute of Canada (CIC) is a national leader in food innovation and is an NSERC Technology Access Center (TAC). The multidisciplinary team combines culinary creativity, food science expertise and market insight to help bring leading-edge food product ideas to life. The relationship between DRD and CSK dates back several years and includes numerous studies on shelf life, flavor and sensory evaluation and product development. CSK was heavily involved in the development of several early prototypes such as a wine product utilizing PEI black currants and sensory evaluation experiments on Maple, Haskap and Black Currant liqueurs. Students from Holland College's Bioscience Technology Program also worked with DRD Inc. on developing an in-house method for assessing the ethanol content in beverage samples accurately and reproducibly before sending for costly certification tests. Holland College's Canada's Smartest Kitchen will work collaboratively with a team from Deep Roots Distillery on several proposed research and development prototypes. Investigating techniques for retaining the natural color of strawberries in a strawberry flavoured liqueur, developing new avenues for repurposing waste and biproducts from apples, blueberries, haskap berries, developing a new line of fruit flavoured vinegars and developing a non-dairy cream based liqueur are all applied research priorities to be covered in this collaboration. Canada's Smartest Kitchen will also provide hands on educational experiences to students of The Culinary Institute of Canada while also teaching the proprietary SMART food product development process to DRD. CSK has developed this process and utilizes it in each of the new research and development projects it undertakes to ensure greatest likelihood of success. At the conclusion of this collaborative research effort, it is anticipated that Deep Roots Distillery will have three fully developed prototype beverages that will be ready for scale up production as well as several new processes to reduce or repurpose their waste/by-product generation. Students from The Culinary Institute of Canada and potentially from the Bioscience Technology program will be hired by Holland College to participate in the research project and be trained in food product development and Culinology and receive valuable training outside of the core curriculum of their programs. Canada's Smartest Kitchen would develop new skills in food science, distillation and value-added beverage development from their participation in this collaboration.