Yes, May 2025 is still seven months away, but we all know time flies when you're having fun – or, more pertinently, that you've got bugger all chance of getting much out of a hospitality venue once summer arrives – so now's the time to put your hands up if you'd like to be part of Pint of Origin next year.
The one-of-a-kind festival returns to Melbourne for a thirteenth time after enjoying its most successful outing yet earlier this year. While events large and small – inside and outside of beer – have been struggling, with many postponed or cancelled, we bucked the trend with a rip-roaring ten days in May during which the 21 host venues sold more than 50,000 pints from their various origins, meaning more than $1m in beer sales alone crossed their bars between May 10 and 19.
Check-ins with Pint of Origin Passports were at an all-time high, with 68 people making it to every venue over the ten days, we ran the fun Konvoy Kegfluencers campaign featuring local beer reps, gave away prizes from the likes of Brompton Bicycles, Beervana, Thirsty Merchants and Bogs, and welcomed our first Boilermaker Hub at Whisky & Alement.
The festival attracted plenty of high-profile media coverage too, including spots on all three main commercial TV networks on the opening weekend, while 100 percent of survey respondents said they'd attend again and recommend the event to mates; 25 percent of those who completed the post-festival survey travelled to Melbourne from interstate.
In short: we had a blast, giving the hard-hit local beer world a welcome shot in the arm. And we're looking forward to doing it all over again – but even better of course – in May 2025.
Right now, that means putting together another lineup of stellar host venues made up of the best beer bars, pubs and brewery venues across the city. After years in which every host was a bar or pub, in recent years we've seen brewpubs join in and add another layer to the festival, while the way in which Whisky & Alement embraced their debut year has left us eager to see what other curveballs venue staff might have in mind for us in 2025.
What's more, if you're a beer lover with a favourite bar or pub you think should be involved, feel free to give the team there a nudge. And if you'd like to find out more about opportunities to partner with us on the festival, get in touch.
Anyone interested in taking part can fill in the brief application form below. Please do so by October 25, 2024. We'd love to make offers to successful applicants the following week and have the lineup locked in by early November so venues can focus on having a bumper summer and we can get on with planning Pint of Origin 2025 in the background.
NB While we'll lock in the 2025 lineup next month, we won't unveil the program – or the vehicle that will succeed the 2023 KegPlane and 2024 Kombi KegVan – until the start of March 2025.
For more on the success of the 2024 festival, in terms of attendance, media coverage, activations and so on, click here.
If you're reading this and wondering: "What are you talking about?" there's this article from a few years back documenting its origins and history, as well as this one starring attendees telling us what they love about Pint of Origin. You can check out the website from the 2024 festival here too.
If you're new to the concept and want to know more, feel free to drop us a line.
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.
