News & Feature Stories
Crafty Pint Supporter News – 19.08.17
We've got some juicy updates this week for both existing Crafty Pint supporters and readers thinking of joining The Crafty Cabal and taking advantage of all the benefits that come your way in return.
Box Clever
With the fourth Bendigo On The Hop approaching, we caught up with the city's sole commercial brewer, Doug Brooke. Now into his fifth year at Brookes Beer, we picked his brains about the challenges of being small, independent and regional.
Beer Travel: Yorkshire
In the last of four articles inspired by his global travels, Nic Sandery recounts his time spent in one of the world's lesser discussed traditional brewing regions. In Yorkshire, he soaks up beers old and new, but mainly midnight curries with giant naan breads.
The Collaborators: Binary Beer
A homebrewer is working with a team at the University of Wollongong to create a keg tracking device that could offer brewers real-time information their kegs. Binary Beer is currently being trialled with Five Barrel Brewing and the Headland Hotel.
Getting Blind With Crafty: Imperial Stouts Revisited
After a four year break, we returned to the most epic of beer styles, imperial stout, for our latest blind tasting. Old favourites and beers not around four years ago went into battle. Who would win?
West City Brewing For Sale
West City Brewing is the latest brewing company to be put on the market. The gypsy operation based in Melbourne's west is best known for its Footscray Ale.
Canvas. Comic Strip. Can.
Following on from our look at branding in the beer industry, Ross Lewis chats to a couple of designers working on Australian breweries' cans as well as a brewery owner whose tinnies are among the most spectacular you'll see.
The Big Issue: Branding Revisited
With the marketplace becoming ever busier, cans on the rise and breweries rebranding seemingly every week, it's time to revisit the issue of branding. Over two days, our trio of WA writers examine one of the great challenges facing brewers.
Getting Into The Spirit
Australia's craft spirit industry is enjoying a rapid rise not dissimilar to that enjoyed by beer in recent years. The connections between the two are strong, particularly at a growing number of breweries that are distilling in house.
Big Beer Monopoly
One of the visitors to this year's Craft Beer Awards was a German journalist and storyteller who has penned a book on the globalisation of beer. Matt King caught up with Dr Ina Verstl to find out more.
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Beer Travel: Bamberg
Nic Sandery is a young brewer set to launch Molly Rose Brewing in the second half of 2017. He embarked on a global beer tour seeking inspiration for his beers and has been documenting his experiences for us. Here, he visits German home of smoke, Bamberg.
Who Brews Slipstream Beers?
The brewing scene in and around Brisbane continues to expand. In recent months, Slipstream launched its first beers and is now opening the cellar door bar at its brewery in the south of the city. Here's founder Deale Stanley-Hunt to tell us more.
Crafty Pint Supporters News – 04.08.17
Time for another update from The Crafty Cabal, the beer lovers bonus scheme in which readers can become supporters of the site and in return get access to heaps of offers, exclusive events, festival tickets and more.
How The West Was Won
The west of Melbourne is undergoing a period of massive growth, and craft beer is expanding right alongside it. The Crafty Pint visited new venues Mr West and Bar Josephine, as well as Two Birds, to find out what the west will do next.
Who Brews With Two Heads?
Two Heads are better than one – at least according to the Hedley brothers. Campbell and Greg decided to abandon life in Sydney and start a brewery. Today, you'll find them and their beers in a converted mill in Bathurst. We find out more...
Gone To Pot
The search for new techniques, flavours and experiences in the beer world continues apace. At The Craft & Co in Collingwood, brewer Heath McVeigh has been brewing with the sort of clay amphora used for beer and wine in the Roman Empire.
Meet The Beeries
If two awards nights in 24 hours wasn't enough to sate you, don't worry: The Beeries is coming. It's a beer awards with a difference, one that focuses on the broader beer community and the people within and comes to Brisbane in September.
Bodriggy Takes Top Award In SA
It was a mixture of faces old and new as the trophies were handed out at the 2017 Royal Adelaide Beer & Cider Awards. Among the winners were Pirate Life, Bodriggy, Nail, Vale, Coopers and Little Bang Brewing.
Roll Out The Barrels
This week sees Hawkers Beer release not one, not two, but four different barrel aged imperial stouts at the same time. With even grander plans for its barrel program in the future, we find out more from CEO Mazen Hajjar.
Craft Beer Awards Winners 2017
Dainton Family Brewery, 4 Pines, Fixation and the Wheaty Brewing Corps were the big winners at the 2017 Craft Beer Awards, collecting the major trophies at the Independent Brewers Association's big night in Adelaide.
The Story Of: Moon Dog Black Lung
With the seventh iteration set to leave the brewery this week, we chat to Moon Dog co-founder Josh Uljans about the only special release to be released annually. This is The Story Of: Black Lung.
Craft Beer Heroes: Trev Birks
Bendigo has arguably the most developed craft beer scene of any city outside the state capitals. In large part, that's down to Bendigo Beer, the group promoting better beer there since 2011. Ahead of its latest festival, we chat to one of its founders.
BrewDog Down Under
One of the UK's leading craft beer brands, BrewDog, has announced it is to set up operations in Australia. They will be opening a brewery and venue in either Brisbane or Newcastle.
Our Man In NZ: ParrotDog Surfs On
From brewing in a toilet to trophy-winning rising stars of the New Zealand brewing industry, it's been quite the ride for the three Matts behind ParrotDog. Jono Galuszka joins them as they settle into their impressive new Lyall Bay home.
Stomping Ground Strikes For Melbourne City
Melbourne brewery Stomping Ground has struck up a partnership with Melbourne City FC. They brewed a beer for the club's FFA Cup launch in what's the latest win for craft brewers striving to gain a toehold in an area traditionally dominated by the big brewers.
Events Wrap 21.07.17
Outside of the country's major beer weeks, the next two weeks are strong contenders for the most intense period of events in the Aussie beer world to date. Drink up!
Help Us Get Blind: Imperial Stouts
Having brought our blind tasting panels back last month – and taken them public – we're aiming to run them every two months now. Next up is imperial stouts and, once more, we're asking you to help us decide which beers to put to the test.
Aussie Exports: Zac From Zenith
Our Aussie Exports series makes a first visit to South America. There, in Peru, we find Zac Lanham at the helm of Cervecería Zenith, a microbrewery he founded with wife Milka in Cusco, the historic city in the heart of the Peruvian Andes.
Podcast People: Bounty Hunter Banter
Having first launched a gypsy brewing company to channel their love of pop culture, the team behind Bounty Hunter Brewing has added banter to beer, as we discover in the latest entry in our occasional series of Podcast People.
Best Beers of 2017 – So Far
With so many new releases hitting taps and fridges every week, it can be hard to keep up. So here's a mid-year refresher featuring the thoughts of 40 beer writers, educators and venue operators on the best of 2017 so far.
Crafty Crawls: Preston
As craft beer nudges ever further outwards from its original Melbourne heartlands, so do our Crafty Crawls. Here, Will Ziebell finds much to satisfy in the evolving suburb that of Preston.
Fresh Prints
The unofficial campaign to educate drinkers about the important of drinking (most) beer fresh continues with the launch of a new video by Modus Operandi highlighting the benefits of checking the age of any beer you buy.
Tap Contracts Here To Stay
Small, independent Australian brewers didn't get the news they were hoping for today. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released the results of its multi-year investigation into tap access and declared the status quo was here to stay.
Beer Nuts: Michael Doulton
When it comes to dedication to the cause, you'll find few who can top Michael Doulton. For our latest Beer Nuts feature, Matt King steps inside one of the more remarkable beer caves you're ever likely to see.
River Of Gold
In just 18 months, the trophy cabinet at Brewhouse Margaret River has become a well-stocked affair. On the back of trophies at the Perth Royal Beer Show awards, Ross Lewis finds out more about the young brewery and its fine dark beers.
Where It's At: On Beer's Frontier II
Global or hyperlocal. Independent or "crafty". The beer world isn't just getting more competitive, it's getting more complex too. Here, we try to unpick the state of play today by studying the craft beer scenes both here and in the US.
Infographic: American & Australian Craft Beer Timeline
There's been much talk of how far the Australian craft beer industry lags behind that of the US. Here, tied in with our look at the state of play, we present a graphic timeline of the rise, fall and rise of the two countries' craft beer industries.
Crafty Cabal Update – 07.07.17
Following the cracking event at Pirate Life's brewery, what's new for Crafty Pint supporters? Well, plenty, with a new competition, new deals, an imminent bar shout and more festival bonuses in the offing too.
Craft Beer Heroes: John Preston
John Preston is one of the country's most unassuming craft beer heroes. In various ways, he's been helping drive the country's homebrew scene forward while supporting many ventures in the commercial brewing world too.
Behind Bars: Jac Morgan
Behind Bars sees The Crafty Pint hop around the country asking people behind reputable beer bars what they're seeing in front of them: what are people drinking, what are the coming styles and so on. This time, it's Jac from Melbourne's Dr Morse.
Strength In Numbers
Just weeks after the CBIA became the Independent Brewers Association, the body has released research showing Australia’s independent beer industry now includes more than 400 breweries, generating $740 million in economic output in one year.
Enjoy By
Some breweries print a best before or packaged date on the label, some put a date on the bottle, others have nothing at all. For the consumer in a bottleshop, how are they to know what’s new, what’s old, and what’s been kept in a warm warehouse for months?
The Golden Handshake
Outgoing Feral sales boss Steve Finney was sent off in fine style last night as the beer brewed as his farewell gift picked up a trophy at the Perth Royal Beer Awards. There was major success for Margaret River Brewhouse too.
Who Brews Ballistic Beers?
When your name suggests an intention to go big, it doesn't hurt to walk away from your first major beer awards laden with gold. That's what happened to young Brisbane brewery Ballistic Beer Co. We find out more...
Beer Nuts: Leith Booker
Beer Nuts is an occasional feature we run that shines a spotlight on people who take their passion for good beer to the extreme – and sometimes beyond. Here, we step inside the beer cave of Leith Booker.
Something's Brewing On Southbank
There aren't many things that haven't been attempted along Melbourne's busy Southbank Promenade. But this week brought something new as Brewmanity headed to Hopscotch to christen Frank the Tank with an oyster stout brew.
Beer Travel: Greece
Last time we heard from Storyteller Spinks, he was in Turkey. He's since moved on to Greece, where he's ensured plenty of time on his travels has been spent in the company of people working in and writing about the country's nascent craft beer scene.
Events Wrap – 23.06.16
With the Winter Solstice just gone and Independence Day coming, there's plenty of themed events taking place across the country. Plus we've got a FODMAP friendly pub tour, showcases galore, luscious dinners and free beers for Crafty supporters.
The Australian Craft Beer Survey Returns
Last year, Sydney bottleshop Beer Cartel launched its Australian Craft Beer Survey, collecting feedback from 6,500 people. The 2017 version is live now as they look to capture a more detailed picture of the local beer landscape.
Brew & A: The Innovative Goat
Little did we know until recently, but a chance meeting with Alana Rees set her on the path to becoming a brewer. In a short space of time, she's gone from homebrewer to Innovation Brewer at Goat to AIBA trophy winner.
