The Crafty Pint Podcast is back for 2025 after a most enjoyable break; we hope all our listeners and viewers had a great festive period too.
Our first show of the year is a little different to most. We still reflect on the stories we’ve covered since the start of 2025, including the news that KAIJU! have become the latest brewing company to enter voluntary administration almost a year to the day after Wayward Brewing did the same, heralding Aussie craft beer’s toughest 12 months.
However, there’s no main guest this time around. Instead, we look ahead to some of the notable upcoming events we’re involved in, as well as announcing a new campaign through which we hope to shine a light on the good deeds taking place throughout the beer and hospo industries.
In terms of events, The Catfish’s QI: Beer Edition on January 18 features both podcast producer Matt Hofmann as MC and Crafty founder James Smith as a panelist. Then, a week later, we’re hosting the live countdown of the GABS Hottest 100 via YouTube, while we also look ahead to the 2025 IBD Asia Pacific Convention in Hobart in conversation with convention chair Brendan Flanagan.
The aforementioned new campaign has been created in partnership with the team at Rallings. You can find out what it means to have “done a Rallings” from the person who came up with the concept in the second half of the show. Or you can get straight on with nominating anyone you know who’s done a good deed – big or small – in the wider beer world here.
We’ll feature the best stories from those nominations in future shows – and there’s prizes up for grabs for both the nominee and the person or business that nominates them.
Start of segments:
7:46 – Discussion of recent news
19:01 – Brendan Flanagan – IBD
23:44 – Preview of GABS Hottest 100 Live Countdown & "Have you done a Rallings?"
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, feel free to rate and review it too.
To find out more about supporting the show or otherwise partnering with The Crafty Pint, contact craig@craftypint.com.
About James
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.
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The winner might be the same as 2022 and 2023 but it's fair to say the 2024 GABS Hottest 100 Aussie Craft Beers is the most fascinating in years. Here's what The Crafty Pint team made of the results.
The 2024 poll saw Mountain Culture's Status Quo become only the second beer to win three in a row, but there were plenty of surprises and new faces in the Hottest 100.
The votes have been counted, and of the 1,877 beers to receive votes from the 400-plus breweries that entered the GABS Hottest 100 of 2023, Mountain Culture Status Quo has landed in top spot for a second year running.
We've taken a deep dive into the GABS Hottest 100 Aussie Craft Beers to see what trends and insights the 2023 countdown reveals in our annual analysis feature.