News & Feature Stories
The Final Six!
After four weeks and hundreds of entries from all over the world, the competition for the World’s Best Beer Trip has been whittled down to a final six. Now it’s up to you, the public, to decide…
Crafty Tales 2: Boneyard
Earlier this year, we launched Crafty Tales, a series of short films looking at different aspects of the craft beer world. Created in conjunction with New McPherson, a Fitzroy-based video production agency,…
Competition: Raid Crafty's Beer Fridge
As first world problems go, the one we’re currently experiencing at Crafty Towers is likely to elicit precisely zero sympathy: we’ve run out of beer fridge space. Yep, despite the fact that…
All Together Now
It’s a Tuesday and I’m in the brewhouse at Eagle Bay Brewery looking down at a drain. "This is the Rolls Royce of brewery drainage," says Cowaramup Brewing’s’s Jeremy Good as Justin Fox, brewer…
The Latest Listings
It’s not that long since we posted our last roundup of new brewery and venue listings on The Crafty Pint. But it’s been long enough for us to add a few more. And, with another dozen or so lying…
Tassie Beer Lovers Unite!
Australia’s burgeoning love with beer weeks shows no sign of abating as today we can announce that, in just a few weeks' time, Hobart will host its first Beer Lovers Week. It will feature a series…
It's Time To Talk Hops
Of all the brewers to have played around with the new wave of Aussie hops, none has delved quite as deep as Ben Kraus at Bridge Road. With one of the country’s main hop farms, Rostrevor, just down the…
Rocking The Rocks
In just over three weeks time, one of Sydney’s iconic hotels will host its annual beer festival. And, while beer festivals seem to be ten a penny these days, this is one that – like the hotel…
Brew & A: The Australian Brewery
The chances are that more Aussies – and indeed more beer drinkers overseas – are going to be hearing and seeing more of the Australian Brewery in the future. Having started up in Sydney’s northwest…
Aussie Export
You could never accuse the team at the Australian Brewery of lacking courage. For a start, they opened their brewery in the deeply un-crafty suburb of Rouse Hill in Sydney’s northwest. Then, while everyone…
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A Beer With Real Clout
A couple of weeks ago, Nail Brewing founder John Stallwood signed off an email: “PS Looking forward to beating Brendan in the SRBC.” It was a reference to the Sydney Royal Beer & Cider Show and his…
The Good Beer Showcase
Good beer never sleeps. It just keeps on keepin' on. It might be more than 250 days until Good Beer Week 2014 returns to Melbourne and Victoria, but for those who can’t wait that long there is salvation.…
More Gold For Redoak
Just last week, we reported on the success enjoyed by Australian brewers at the UK’s largest beer awards. Hawthorn Brewing Company, 4 Pines and Redoak all picked up golds at the International Beer…
Bigger By The Bay
When the organisers were drawing up plans for last year’s inaugural Beers by the Bay beer festival on the Mornington Peninsula, the intention was always that it would be a fun day out for all the…
Get Ready For GBW 2014
It may still be 258 days away, but if you’re thinking of taking part in the fourth Good Beer Week and haven’t started thinking about your events yet then now’s the time. Event registrations…
World's Best Beer Trip
How would you like the chance to live, work and play with one of Australia’s best craft breweries? What if you could hang out with two of the country’s top brewers while they covered all accommodation…
Blog of the Month: Beer Is Your Friend
From music webzine editor to newspaper journo to beer blogger – all the while becoming ever more fascinated with great beer – Glen Humphries has spent a life writing, with Beer Is Your Friend his beer…
Best Of British
Speak to those recently returned from Beervana trips to New Zealand and you’ll hear evidence that, for all its recent advances, the Australian craft beer industry still trails a little way behind our…
Summer In A Can
There are many factors to consider when deciding whether to put beer, especially craft beer, into a can. They might include the willingness of the market to embrace such a product, how a beer will present…
Drinking In Style: Imperial Stouts
In conjunction with our blind tasting of imperial stouts, we return to our resident beer scholar, Chris Brady, to find out more about the historic style that is embraced my growing number of Aussie brewers each winter.
Back To The 'Rat
Victoria is set to be treated to a plethora of beer festivals over the coming months, as the seemingly insatiable appetite for mixing craft beer and live music sees the return of regional events on the…
James Halliday Article: Lock, Stock & Barrel
The latest edition of James Halliday’s Wine Companion Magazine has been dropping through the letterboxes of subscribers this week. It features an article we wrote on Farmhouse Ales (well, mostly Saisons)…
More Craftiness
Today’s addition of The Grifter Brewing Co to the collection of Aussie breweries and craft beer-supporting venues we’ve got featured on the site heralds what we hope will be a couple of weeks…
SCBW Program Is Live!
The program for the third Sydney Craft Beer Week is launched today. Featuring around 65 events at more than 40 venues, it can be viewed in full on the festival’s website. The eight day shindig runs…
Rebuilding The Temple
There was a collective gasp – and no little sadness – around the craft beer world when, earlier this year, word spread that Temple had gone into voluntary liquidation. The East Brunswick based brewery…
Royal Approval
Much has been made of the high profile chefs making appearances at this year’s Royal Melbourne Show. And with good reason too: if the local press didn’t run its six celebrity chef stories a…
Beer Festival Roundup
The festival calendar becomes busier by the week as the popularity of craft beer grows. We’ll do our best to ensure they’re all listed in our Events Diary but figured it wouldn’t hurt…
Festival Madness!
With summer peering distantly over the horizon, it seems that barely a week goes by without another beer festival or beer week being announced. It’s a sign that craft beer is gaining in popularity…
Getting Blind With Crafty: Imperial Stouts
So which beers came out on top in the biggest (in every way) Crafty Pint blind tasting to date? HOw did the Aussies fare against beers from the Old World. Read on to find out...
Ask Brewer Jayne: How to judge beers
This weekend is the occasion of the next Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel. We say “occasion” as it will feature Imperial Stouts and thus is the one causing the most ripples of excitement among panelists. Usually,…
Ask Brewer Jayne: Getting into the brewing industry
Way back in the distant mists of time (well, June), we announced that Jayne Lewis, co-founder of Two Birds Brewing, was joining The Crafty Pint as an occasional “agony aunt” for beer. She would take…
Beer Makes Pigs Smarter
Have a look at the photo above. In particular the billboard on the wall of Prahran Fish & Chips. What thoughts spring to mind? “Ooh, that’s silly – a pig wearing a tie and mortarboard” perhaps. Maybe:…
Gut Reaction
Last month, Matt Donelan put the St Peter’s Brewery he’d built – literally – from the ground up on the market. After 13 years brewing the likes of Cinnamon Girl and Killagh Stout for the Sydney…
Beer Travel: Beervana NZ 2013
The large contingent of Aussie beer lovers that made their way to Wellington’s superb annual Beervana festival last weekend should have just about shaken off the cobwebs by now. Among them was Tiffany…
Billabong's Killer Wheat
On the evening of the 2012 Perth Royal Beer Show Awards Presentation Gala, I was pondering which of Feral’s brews would win the trophy for Best Western Australian Beer. I wasn’t the only one who felt…
Willy Beer Fest
The intention was merely to find a way to mark the 150th anniversary of his pub. But as Scott Meager considered ideas such as a commemorative beer, things started getting a little out of hand. Next thing…
Time For A Change
The Federation Square Victorian Microbreweries Showcase has been a fixture in the Melbourne beer calendar for years. In recent years, the bi-annual event has grown to fill every nook and cranny of the…
Raven On And On
It was last winter that word began to spread that one of Melbourne’s longest established microbreweries was on its last legs. To paraphrase Monty Python, it was beyond pining for the fjords and set to…
NZ Brewers Guild Awards 2013: The Winners
The 2013 NZ Brewers Guild Awards Dinner took place in Wellington last night and there were some names that will be very familiar to Aussie drinkers taking out trophies – as well as a few lesser known…
Top Of The Class
There’s a line in the Sh!t Beer Geeks Say! video in which one of the drinkers parodies the uber-exclusivity of some craft beers today. “This is a really limited release,” he says. “You can’t…
Blog of the Month: 250 Beers
The advent of Untappd has made it easy for avid beer drinkers to document the journey on which their tastebuds takes them. But for one man, merely tapping “Check In” and giving beers a rating doesn’t…
Barrelling Along
Moo Brew’s Seasonal Stout and, in particular, its strictly limited release Vintage Barrel-Aged sibling are icons of the Australian craft beer scene. So, when the Tasmanian brewery announced that this…
It's Pouring In Hobart
It’s wasn’t that long ago that your best – and pretty much only – hope for a decent selection of craft beer in Hobart was the New Sydney. Today, the beer scene is booming, with the likes of Preachers*…
WA Beer Week Is Back
Just as craft beer in Australia has its origins in WA, so do beer weeks. While Melbourne’s Good Beer Week may be the most high profile of those in existence today, with others found in Queensland,…
We Are Family
Family breweries are hardly unique in Australia. Throughout the craft beer world, you will find tiny setups comprised of husband and wife, mum and dad, brother and sister, father and son. But, as far as…
New Beers: Riverside, Mountain Goat, Nail, Moon Dog, Murray's
The backend of The Crafty Pint has developed something of a Bermuda Triangle at the minute. Whenever we try to add a new beer to a brewery it disappears as soon as we hit “Publish” and the…
Pacific To Rule Britannia?
This month’s attendances at the Man Utd and Liverpool pre-season friendlies in Sydney and Melbourne have shown Aussies still have quite an appetite for certain British exports (despite the Ashes, Lions,…
A Brewery With Beer
The Odyssey Tavern has been going great guns since bringing eight taps and multiple fridges full of craft beer to VIctoria’s Surf Coast last year. Yet it wasn’t living up to its name. From day one,…
Bootleg Rebooted
Next year, Bootleg Brewery will celebrate two decades of craft brewing in Margaret River. It’s a quite remarkable achievement in a region known primarily for wine – and perhaps the odd shark or two.…
James Halliday Article - Stout Advice
With our next piece for James Halliday’s Wine Companion Magazine sent off to the publishers today, it seems a good time to dust down another of our features for the mag. What’s more, our latest dip…
