UPDATE: Frequent Frother will be tapped at all 20 Pint of Origin venues on May 5 as a teaser for the launch of the festival a week later. Huge thanks to Bintani and NZ Hops who are sponsoring the brew too. Cheers!
After a few rounds of voting and much discussion within The Crafty Pint team, we have a name for the 2023 Pint of Origin beer. Congratulations to Tim Brady for his winning suggestion – which wasn't only our top pick but also turned out to be the very first entry into the competition.
So, when the festival rolls around again in May, the global pale ale featuring ingredients from every #PoO23 region will be called *drum roll*...
Frequent Frother!
There were heaps of amusing, clever, pithy, out there and, in some cases, totally unsuitable entries (of which more later), but in the end we felt Frequent Frother ticked so many boxes.
We agreed it was fun, flows off the tongue, captures what Pint of Origin is all about, references this year's travel theme – even hinting at the passports used to guide people between venues, and also encapsulates the sort of beer that this is designed to be: easy-drinking and sessionable – even with ingredients drawn from across the planet.
So congrats to Tim (pictured on the right at Fox Friday on a recent trip to Tasmania), who tells us he's a finance business partner who you'll find at his local brewery, White Bay, most weekends.
When it comes to the inspiration for the name, he says: "I am always looking for a unique beer and that was me travelling all over the place. You also can’t go wrong with alliteration!"
Once the beer is brewed and Pint of Origin merch printed, we'll send him his prize, while the beer itself – a tweaked version of the "PoO-totype" from last year – will hit taps at this year's 20 host venues ahead of the festival kicking off on May 12.
As for who those venues are, as well as who they're showcasing, there's not long to wait: from Monday (March 20), we'll be revealing four per day so by next Friday you'll know the full lineup. We've got a mixture of familiar faces and some excellent newcomers too so keep your eyes on Crafty socials...
I coulda been a contender...
Frequent Frother wasn't without strong competition from other entries. There were those in the keep-it-snappy camp such as GlobAle / GlobeAle and OriginAle, and others in a similar vein that focused on the worldwide nature of the event: Globetrotter Ale; Passport Pale; Hopping All Over The World; Barley GlobeHopper.
There were some that took inspiration from the fact the ingredients in the beer and, indeed, the beers at the festival are drawn from all over the world, including the very timely Every Beer, Everywhere, All At Once – which would have given us the chance to googly-eye the Crafty and PoO logos – and Beer, There and Everywhere (which earned a podium spot).
Others took a more tangential approach, potentially from people looking for a job naming beers from the likes of Range, Banks, or Mountain Culture: Supply Chain Issues; I've Been Everywhere, Man; Synchronised Swilling; Origin of Symmetry; Fountainhead; The Cosmeaux.
And then, of course, there were those that took inspiration from the unintended yet everliving Pint of Origin hashtag / acronym that appeared as soon as we launched it at Good Beer Week in 2012. So hats off to the readers that suggested the following: PoO Juice; I Remember My First PoO; A Very Crafty PoO; FEC-ALE EARTH; PoOnami; and The Floater.
The last of these even came complete with an explanatory justification: "Named for the person you keep running into as they 'float' between different Pint of Origin venues, and in a moment of self-realisation it dawns on you that *they're also running into you* – which one of you is 'The Floater'?"
Thanks to everyone that took the time to enter and for the laughs we enjoyed while picking a winner. We look forward to making Pint of Origin 2023 the biggest #PoO yet from May 12 to 21. And we've got more shenanigans to share with you between now and then too...
James Smith launched The Crafty Pint in 2010, two years after moving to Australia from the UK. He was taken to Mountain Goat within weeks of landing in Melbourne, joined their indoor cricket team, and is still navigating the rabbit hole that is craft beer to this day.
The beers that turned you on to good beer:
- Watching pints of McEwan's 80 Shilling settle when visiting family in Edinburgh.
- Pints of flat Bass from the jug at the Cap & Stocking in Kegworth.
- A first Paulaner Hefeweizen when working in Munich in 1998: “This smells of bananas!”
- Castle Rock Harvest Pale – how could a 3.8 percent ABV beer be so good? (It turns out it was an early example of the three Cs – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus – in an English bitter).
- Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA poured through hops at the Sunset Grill in Cambridge, MA, in the company of a man who turned out to be the Beer Nut (while we were both covering a double murder case at the time).
- Ordering a Mountain Goat Hightail on my first day as an Aussie resident as it was local and I’d never heard of it; “A dark Australian beer; well I never…”
- Murray’s Icon 2IPA at Beer DeLuxe Fed Square, recommended by a guy I’d not long known who's now the main man at Fixation, served by Mik Halse, now head of sales at Hawkers. How could an Australian beer smell as good as that?!?
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Any really good, fresh and balanced West Coast style IPA. Punchy hop aromatics are the most obvious way to capture someone's attention and these IPAs, done well, present the key components in beer (if you're sticking to just water, malt, hops and yeast) in harmony yet with the volume turned up.
- Saison Dupont. Arguably a selfish choice here as I bloody love the broad saison style and dearly hope it will finally take hold in Australia one day. Given a choice, I'd probably crack one enlivened with Brettanomyces like Molly Rose Matilde for myself but, when it comes to turning on someone new, you've got to go with the classic.
- Rodenbach Caractère Rouge. Because if you don't enjoy or can't appreciate this beer, I'll never win you over. And because Filip, the fruit and wood specialist at Rodenbach that designed it, is a beautiful human.
The last beer you enjoyed:
Fixation IPA at The Incubator.
Three things that represent you:
- The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Golden Plains
NB All articles written by James in the first eight years of the site appear as By Crafty Pint. Today, that's used for collaborative efforts by the wider team.
