Prepare For #PoO15

When we came up with the idea to introduce Pint of Origin* at the 2012 Good Beer Week, we had no idea where it would lead. The inspiration behind it was to try to give small breweries around Australia an opportunity to be a part of the country's biggest celebration of beer even if they never normally sold beer outside their own brewery and had no contacts in Victoria.

The concept was simple: find great venues in Melbourne with enough taps and invite them to pair up with a particular Aussie state for the week to showcase the best of its brewers' beers. Essentially, inner Melbourne became a microcosm for the wider Aussie beer world. And it proved a hit from the off, with participating Pint of Origin venues (or PoO venues as they very quickly became known – how did we not see that coming...?) welcoming happy punters in such numbers that they would enjoy one of the, if not the, best week of their year.

A couple of years ago, we added some international venues and in 2015 (#PoO15 for you social media sorts) have nine awesome Pint of Origin venues – including some first timers – representing the six Aussie states plus the USA, Europe and New Zealand. You can check them all out via the Pint of Origin page on the Good Beer Week website and find more info in the main Pint of Origin listing on Crafty. You can also keep tabs on pop-up events, dinners and meet the brewer evenings in the Crafty Pint Events Diary.

* Credit for the name "Pint of Origin" goes to Jade at The Wheaty

Welcoming Now Tapped To The Party

With so many beers to try during the week – many that may never been seen again in Melbourne – it pays to be able to keep tabs with what's pouring where and when. We created tap lists for the Pint of Origin venues last year, since when a new app has launched that does that for any venue in Australia that wants it all year round.

Now Tapped is the brainchild of Angus Bremner, brother of one of the 7 cent brewers, and we loved the concept so much we started embedding his tap lists into Crafty Pint directory pages months ago.

It made perfect sense to get Now Tapped involved with Pint of Origin. So we did.

When Good Beer Week kicks off you'll find up to date tap lists for the nine venues embedded on their GBW pages and you'll find their pages on the Now Tapped app dressed up in #PoO15 livery too.

To keep up to date with what's on tap where – and to enter our Pint of Origin competition – you need to download the free (and ad-free) app:

Win Beer at Pint of Origin 2015

As if bringing the world of beer to the taps of some of Melbourne's best pubs wasn't enough, we've lined up an epic swag of beery prizes for eager #PoO15 participants. And we don't reckon it could be easier to take part either.

When you visit a venue during Good Beer Week, a button will appear on its Now Tapped page. Click this to check in. Once you've done that at four venues you can enter the competition, with four winners being selected at random after the festival is finished.

We've got a case from each Aussie state – from Boatrocker, Feral, Van Dieman, Newstead, Australian Brewery and Pirate Life – plus six-packs from each of the nine venues.

One winner will get five of those cases, another will get eight of the six-packs. To encourage people to visit our lone Southside venue, the case of Pirate Life and six pack from the Palace Hotel will go to one person who includes SA in their four or more venues. As a bonus, The Alehouse Project has also donated a Golden Ticket to its forthcoming Dark Side of Beer event, which gets the winner a pot of each beer poured over that week; include NZ in your venues for a chance to win this prize.

Full details on the competition can be found here.

The 2015 Venues

Gertrude Hotel – Tasmania
Rainbow Hotel – New South Wales
Brother Burger & The Marvellous Brew – Queensland
Palace Hotel – South Australia
Royston Hotel – Western Australia
The Terminus – Victoria
Forester's Beer Hall – Europe
Great Northern – USA
The Alehouse Project – New Zealand

Click on the venue name for their Crafty Pint page or the region they're representing to access their Pint of Origin page on the Good Beer Week website.