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Year In Beer 2024: Victoria
The third of our Year In Beer 2024 podcasts finds us on home turf as we turn our attention to Victoria.
It’s undoubtedly been a tough year for many there, something that became very apparent when we started totting up the voluntary administrations, sales and closures from the past 12 months. Hospo trade has been down, with the industry suffering across the board – not just in beer – too, yet there’s also been much to enjoy and plenty to celebrate, from great beers, new breweries and venues, to successful events and more.
Joining Will and James to cast an eye over the year are Cherry Murphy and Jimmy Krekelberg. Cherry spent ten years with Blackhearts & Sparrows, many of those as the indie retail chain’s beer buyer, curating their range, hosting diverse events, and putting together a number of fascinating collaborations.
Jimmy is the founder and head brewer of Good Land Brewing in Traralgon, which he founded after plying his trade at a number of breweries overseas. While his lager is their biggest seller, he’s garnered a reputation as a brewer of some seriously out there and creative beers too, from voluptuous smoothie sours to hefty imperial stouts.
In the first segment, Will and James discuss the continued success of smaller, niche festivals, notable new openings, the pub revival, beers that impressed, and the joy businesses are finding by operating where there's little good beer or hospitality offerings. They also discuss this week’s opening of Sailors Grave’s Dunetown home in Gippsland, three years after they unveiled their plans.
As well as casting an eye over the past year in beer in Victoria, Cherry reflects on her decade at Blackhearts & Sparrows, the changes and improvements she's witnessed, and the challenges she sees for beer – some of them self-inflicted.
Meanwhile, Jimmy takes a look at 2024 through the lens of a regional brewer, sharing many of his highlights – both for his brewery and others – and his hopes for beer across Gippsland, not least on the back of the second Gippsland Beer Fest recently.
We join Cherry around the 23.30 minute mark and Jimmy around ten minutes later.
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.
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.
