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Year In Beer 2024: Western Australia
The Crafty Pint's Year In Beer series for 2024 has taken up residency on the podcast we launched back in July.
If you've not already, you can read the launch article for the series here, which addresses some of the key trends we've observed on a national level in 2024. For the remainder of the series, we speak to guests from every state and territory – both Crafty Pint contributors and people who've enjoyed notable years – and will be publishing those episodes every few days through to the end of the year.
For the third instalment of our Year In Beer 2024 series, we head west from South Australia to catch up with two of the people behind one of the state's brightest new breweries and the brothers who run a business that's been watching the state's craft beer scene evolve for two decades.
The first of those are Terri and Trav Moore. They're part of the team behind Phat Brew Club, which has risen in next to no time from homebrew competition winners to pro brewers without a home to operators of one of Perth's largest and liveliest brewpubs. They've enjoyed yet another banging year in 2024, pulling huge crowds at Froth Town, and are set to open a second venue in 2025.
The brothers are Jose and Nelio Pestana, founders of one of WA's finest indie retailers of top-notch booze, Copper & Oak. They opened their first store in Perth more than 20 years ago, spotted the way the market was heading early on, and now operate a second store with a third on the way.
As well as selling one of the widest selections of beer in WA, they're arch-collaborators who've released a series of consistently excellent beers with some of the state's finest. Full disclosure: Crafty Pint contributor Guy Southern is part of the team these days and picked up one of three major awards won by Copper & Oak in the past two years.
Prior to catching up with our guests, Will and James pick the brains of both Guy and our writer in the South West, Jono Outred.
Across the three segments, we discover what's been going down in WA over the past 12 months – the noteworthy trends, the hottest breweries, the most delicious beers, and more – as well as looking ahead to 2025.
The chat with Jono and Guy starts just after the 90 second mark, we join Terri and Trav after 17 minutes, and catch up with the Copper & Oak team on 32 minutes.
You can watch or listen to the episode here or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and other podcast platforms. Please like and subscribe – and if you are enjoying the show, please rate and review it too.
The Crafty Pint's 2024 Year In Beer series is proudly presented by Mogwai Labs, leaders in liquid yeast solutions. For the perfect pitch every time, visit mogwailabs.com.au.
NB If you're watching on YouTube, there was a connection issue that affected the video from Phat Brew Club towards the end of their segment, but the audio is not impacted.
To find out more about supporting the show or otherwise partnering with The Crafty Pint, contact craig@craftypint.com.
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.
