New Beers

Barely a day goes by without another seasonal or one-off special flying out of an Australian brewery (if not ten). Here and in our weekly newsletter, we'll bring you news and, if we've sampled them, our take on as many of them as possible. Happy hunting!

Bendigo Beer

Moon Dog & Run The Jewels No Save Point IPA

Tapped January 22, 2021
When it comes to favourite Run The Jewels tracks, I’d have to say mine is Lie, Cheat, Steal. Sure, Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck) is the undeniable banger that still gets dropped late at night for the poor souls still at a party where I've managed to secure an AUX cord, but Lie, Cheat, Steal has the flow, lyrics and bombastic build-up that perfectly captures the essence of what makes El-P and Killer Mike such a wonderful force. You may well wonder why you’re reading about this on a beer… Read more
Style
Hazy IPA
ABV
6.5%
Stockists

Available online here

Then select bottleshops nationwide

Boston Brewing Julius Squeezer

Tapped January 22, 2021
Namesake Julius Caesar was revered for his political and military savvy, as well as tidying up the calendar as we now know it, and criticised for shady methods in getting what he wanted – let’s start a riot in Rome, and then force some reforms through while no one is paying attention. Equal intent may be assigned here with Boston’s sour orange NEIPA. Julius Caesar's agrodolce, fruity orange leads throughout, with subtle tang, juicy body and a bitter, citric twist. However, this acidity balances… Read more
Style
Sour Orange NEIPA
ABV
6.0%
Stockists

Available from the Denmark brewery and Victoria Park venue

Plus regular Boston stockists

Beerfarm Save the Harvest Strawberry Sour 2021

Tapped January 22, 2021
Beerfarm’s Save the Harvest Strawberry Sour has made an annual appearance since the 2018 strawberry needle crisis. In 2021, it's the Metricup brewery's first hotly-anticipated limited release for the year, an reiteration complete with a couple of tweaks that are, in part, due to a particularly trying year for Australian fruit farmers. Save the Harvest is now a beer brewed around the rejected and unwanted strawberries from Australian strawberry growers, with the goal of not only producing a quality… Read more
Style
Strawberry Sour
ABV
4.9%
Bitterness
8 IBU

Black Hops California Love

Tapped January 20, 2021
For their first limited release in 2021, Black Hops have looked to a sunshine state that isn’t their own to brew California Love. The West Coast IPA is in tune with an earlier time in America; not in a MAGA or Trumpian sense (see ya!) but more to an era when America’s big hoppy beers were lean, clear and all about the notes you’d get from the “Three C’s” of Cascade, Centennial, Columbus. In the case of California Love, it’s resin and pine that leads the charge, with enough of it it… Read more
Style
West Coast IPA
ABV
7.2%

Stomping Ground Into The 'Wood Barrel Aged Gose With Lemon Myrtle

Tapped January 20, 2021
It’s probably thanks to the sheer number of kettle sours that keep getting released but when I receive a gose featuring native lemon myrtle, my first thought isn't "I bet this is barrel aged". But Stomping Ground’s first can of 2021 is a far cry from a sour made quickly, instead, it’s part of the brewery’s Into The ‘Wood series and Barrel Aged Gose with Lemon Myrtle spent 15 months ageing in French oak wine barrels. That time in barrels has given it many layers of complexity… Read more
Style
Barrel Aged Gose
ABV
4.5%

Dainton Beer Peaches & S'Cream

Tapped January 19, 2021
Dainton Beer’s first limited release of 2021 is part Edvard Munch painting and part a reflection of what many of us spent 2020 doing. OK, so maybe the Peaches & S’Cream design is pretty much all Munch, although I for one did spend plenty of last year screaming inside my heart. I also spent a lot of it wondering if there were too many IPA variants and if too many of them contained lactose, only for Dainton to welcome the new year with what they’ve dubbed an “Oatscream IPA.” The inclusion… Read more
Style
Oatscream IPA
ABV
7.5%

Swell Brewery Lagundri Bay Tropical Session Ale & Southport Sunset Blood Orange Sour

Tapped January 19, 2021
Lagundri Bay is a popular tourist surf beach located off the island of Nias in Sumatra, Indonesia. Several years ago, Swell founder Dan Wright spent time there surfing, reading brewing books and drinking Bintang. The Lagundri Bay Tropical Session Ale has been brewed as a beer he wished he'd had available to him: a session IPA that smacks of lazing on the beach in the summertime sun. The tropical vibe has been harnessed well, with juicy mango, pineapple, some lychee and a little papaya on the nose.… Read more
Style
Session IPA & Blood Orange Sour
ABV
4.2% & 3.2%

La Sirène Cuvée Bleu 2020

Tapped January 17, 2021
Anyone lucky enough to attend the first Blobfish Festival – a celebration of all things sour, wild and funky – in 2019 would have found much to tantalise their taste buds. Of the many beers to delight mine was a blueberry-laden, barrel-aged affair from La Sirène, an offering so delightful I sent a few mates over to give it a go. It seems the brewers were fans too, with a new version of the beer returning as the Alphington operation's last limited release of 2020. The backstory to this version… Read more
Style
Barrel-Aged Wild Ale with Blueberries
ABV
7.5%

Bad Shepherd Homegrown Session IPA

Tapped January 17, 2021
Cheltenham brewery Bad Shepherd have enjoyed success – not to mention plenty of coverage – with their Victorian Pale Ale, a beer that helped bring the reawakened Melbourne ale yeast back to prominence in a celebration of all Aussie ingredients. It's a formula they've returned to as their IPA Series starts up again in 2021. With Homegrown, it's a case once more of all Victorian ingredients, this time including the recently-named Eclipse hops (formerly HPA-016) from Hop Products Australia. Set… Read more
Style
Session IPA
ABV
4.0%

Sanctus Brewing Empty Head Pilsner

Tapped January 16, 2021
Empty Head sounds like an insult. But what is there to insult? No one’s casting aspersions on a beer this refreshing in the Clarence River region. There are plenty of other beers with New World hops, next to no bitterness, haze, lactose, and fruit additions. But this isn’t one of them. This is a pilsner. Crisp and clean, just like the evening breeze off the Clarence River. Smooth malt sweetness to do battle with the salty sea air after a surf. Sessionable for sinking tinnies while you’re out… Read more
Style
Pilsner
ABV
4.7%

Hop Nation 30-G Single Hop Series

Tapped January 15, 2021
Hop Nation’s 30-G Single Hop Series is a journey into what can happen when a rather substantial volume of a single hop variety can do to four beers; each is a 7 percent ABV IPA triple-dry-hopped with 30 grams of the green stuff per litre of beer. Each of them is pale and hazy; first, let’s start with Cashmere, which was my personal pick of the quartet. Here, the American hop provides a hard to define but rich berry flavour, which sits closest to raspberries but also brought to mind blackberries,… Read more
Style
Single Hop IPAs
ABV
All 7.0%

Akasha Project Blood Orange Gose

Tapped January 15, 2021
The first Akasha Project release for 2021 also happens to be the Sydney brewery’s first limited release tin that isn’t driven by hops (since rebranding last year anyway). Instead, they’ve traded heavy hopping rates for kettle souring and buckets of citrus pulp to brew Blood Orange Gose. It’s a pink-hued beer that would fit with any picnic in a park and largely that’s thanks to the balance between sourness, juiciness and saltiness. Many modern kettle sours land pretty close to soft drinks… Read more
Style
Gose
ABV
4.5%

Bailey Brewing Hazy IPA & Draught

Tapped January 15, 2021
This duo greet the thousands that descend upon the Swan Valley brewery venue each week with a straightforwardness, and a knowledge there will be a beer on offer that’s a "beer" – there’s no fairy bread adjuncts here. And, while Hazy IPA remains on the lighter side of both yellow opacity and ABV, its broad appeal will likely see it become a venue best-seller. Running a tropi-citrus theme, driven by El Dorado’s pineapple / mango burst, peachy stonefruit, low bitterness, and a sense… Read more
Style
Hazy IPA & Aussie Lager
ABV
5.5% & 4.8%
Stockists

Available from the brewery

Hop Nation Xolo & Single Foedre Sour Red

Tapped January 14, 2021
Hop Nation have welcomed in 2021 by taking the hazy world the Footscray-based brewery has spent years exploring in a slightly new direction. Xolo is a hazy IPA where the malt-bill is based on corn and along with Sabro, Galaxy and Mosaic, lime zest and mango were used in the brew too. That lime zest really makes its presence felt; adding a tart citrus hit which brought to mind a particularly tart mandarin before more classic hazy flavours of mango and yellow nectarine and a biting bitterness finishes… Read more
Style
Hazy IPA & Sour Red
ABV
Both 6.5%

King Road Brewing Belgian Wit

Tapped January 13, 2021
The Belgian witbier – and wheat beers more generally – once ruled refreshment in parts of the world between the World Wars before lager’s industrial dominance took deep root. One example in particular, Hoegaarden, remains well known, although its history is borrowed: 1445? More like 1966. And, given the current drinking climate, making one in the Twenties seems like the most punk rock brewing option, even if the liquid is hazy. In the glass, King Road's take on the Euro classic releases yeast-driven… Read more
Style
Witbier
ABV
4.9%
Stockists

Available from the brewery on tap and for CANimal takeaways

Moon Dog Groundhog Haze

Tapped January 12, 2021
Back in the sad days of VHS there were probably four films – all taped from the TV – that I regularly returned to. The first three were the Back To The Future trilogy I watched so often I can still remember what was happening on Ramsay Street circa 1994, and the fourth was Groundhog Day. It’s a film I enjoyed so often that, looking back, maybe living inside the Punxsutawney purgatory that befouls Bill Murray wouldn’t have bothered me all that much. Just as returning to an old tape over and… Read more
Style
Hazy IPA
ABV
6.2%

Little Bang Brewing 12,000 Hazy IPAs

Tapped January 12, 2021
In 2020, a plethora of limited release IPAs were discharged into the wild: straight IPAs, hazy IPAs, IIPAs, oat cream IPAs, sour oat cream IPAs; hop fiends were spoilt for choice. Many arrived with quirky names, eye-catching labels and diverse hop combinations. As the year came to a close, the team at Little Bang decided to release 12,000 of them at once – the same hazy IPA but each with a unique name and label. You can read how it came about here, with brewery co-founder Ryan Davidson's algorithm… Read more
Style
Hazy IPA
ABV
6.3%

Big Shed Strata/Zappa IPA

Tapped January 12, 2021
The Big Shed brewing team has started 2021 with a bang, wasting no time in releasing their first limited release. They've called upon two big-hitting new hops to impart their oily goodness into a West Coast style IPA too. Strata and Zappa were among the US varieties causing a buzz in the beer industry in 2020; the former Strata is the progeny of Perle, which has its origins in Germany but is also grown in the States, while Zappa was discovered in the wild and is native to North America. The combination… Read more
Style
IPA
ABV
6.5%
Bitterness
38 IBUs

One Drop Brewing Peach & Elderflower, Feijoa & Manuka Flower & Blueberry & Lavender

Tapped December 30, 2020
One Drop have been known for their fruit sours since they opened, but now they’ve started their Fruit & Flower series of sours to get bees puckering their lips as well.† The first is Peach & Elderflower, and it doesn’t waste any time introducing you to what's in store. There’s a pungent hit of funk on the nose with the peach, but then the first sip is all juicy, tart peach with the lightest floral whisper in the distance – no funk here. The flavours cling to all parts of your tongue,… Read more
Style
Fruit & Flower Sours
ABV
3.5% & 6.1% & 5.5%

Innate Brewers Imperial Brave New World & Heirloom Czech Pilsner

Tapped December 30, 2020
Innate's collab with The Crafty Corner references someone named Captain Dick, but we’re happier focusing on Huxley’s dystopian novel of its title. Brave New World, initially a parody inspired by a future offered by the Industrial Revolution, soon took on a life of its own, becoming one of the world’s best known, and most highly regarded, novels. Now in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we grapple algorithms not steam, but the cultural impact is equally potent. But, as this is a beer publication,… Read more
Style
Double IPA & Czech Pilsner
ABV
7.8% & 4.9%
Stockists

Cellarbrations Carlisle

Cellarbrations Vic Park

And Innate's WA stockists

More stockists...

The Crafty Pint is an independent online magazine and resource for anyone interested in craft beer in Australia. We bring an honest, old-fashioned journalistic approach to beer's brave new world, telling stories because they're worth telling not because someone is paying us to write them.

Like many of the people who have changed the face of beer in Australia, we believe in authenticity, integrity, enjoyment and love. We hope to play a role in helping good beer, brewed by good people, find its way into the hands of more drinkers.

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