About Mirella
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Beer specialist, Mirella Amato, has dedicated herself to helping people discover and explore beer since 2007.
Through Beerology, Mirella regularly conducts fun and informative guided beer tasting sessions as well as beer dinners, food pairing workshops and seminars. She can also be seen hosting public beer tastings at various festivals. Here are some of the festivals that have featured Beerology beer tastings:
Halifax: Seaport Beerfest
Montréal: Le Mondial de la bière
Stratford: Savour Stratford
Toronto: Hart House Craft Beer Festival & Summer BBQ
Session 99
The Toronto Festival of Beer
Vankleek Hill: Oktoberfest
Mirella can occasionally be heard on CBC radio and has been featured on Breakfast Television, CP24 and Radio Canada television. Her work has been published in many beer magazines and brewspapers and she is a regular contributor to TAPS Magazine. Mirella also contributed a number of entries to the Oxford Companion to Beer.
In 2009, Mirella added staff training and consulting to her repertoire. Her Beerology 101 workshops and courses are designed to give bartenders, chefs and brewery staff all of the necessary tools to confidently navigate a beer selection, describe beer flavours & aromas and to pair beer with food. As a consultant, Mirella utilizes her specialization in sensory evaluation, beer service and food pairing to assist breweries with product descriptions and development and to assist bars in devising beer lists.
Mirella is always striving to further her beer knowledge and sensory evaluation repertoire. She was the first woman in Canada to become a Certified CiceroneTM (beer sommelier.) She has completed an advanced brewing certificate on the critical control points in brewing at Maska Laboratories in Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec. More recently, Mirella passed the WSET Intermediate Certificate in Wine & Spirits with honours. She is one of only ten National Level BJCP judges in the country and has sat on the jury for homebrew competitions internationally, as well as for the following noted commercial competitions:
Canada: Canadian Brewing Awards
Concours MBière
Ontario Brewing Awards
France: Concours MBière
Germany: European Beer Star
U.S. Great American Beer Festival
World Beer Cup
Mirella is very active within the Beer Judge Certification Program and has organized and run study groups for prospective judges in Toronto, with the support of the Canadian Amateur Brewers’ Association. Mirella also contributed to shaping the curriculum for the sensory evaluation courses at the Canadian Food and Wine Institute Brewmaster Program, where she taught for their inaugural year.
Mirella is involved in many projects that focus on promoting local beer, and the art of beer appreciation. She was a board member for the Canadian Amateur Brewers’ Association from 2007 to 2010. Mirella is a founding member of Cask! and a proud member of the Pink Boots Society. She also founded and runs the Toronto Chapter of Barley’s Angels.
On a personal note…
My background is French-Canadian and Italian. I am fluent in French, and visit Québec many times a year to keep up with the local brewing scene. I have made many trips to Italy where the craft beer industry is really blooming and regularly attend conferences and festivals in the U.S. In Toronto, I help organize events with Treehouse Group, promoting “multi-disciplinary collaboration… to encourage diverse thinking”. Whether at home or abroad, I am always immersing myself in new cultures, exploring different cuisines and, of course, discovering new beers.