News & Feature Stories
Expanding The Flock
Like a sculptor chipping away at a giant block of granite (albeit a block that keeps growing at a rate of knots), we’re steadily making progress through the list of venues and breweries keen to be…
The Flight To Beervana
In less than three weeks, what’s becoming an ever larger annual trans-Tasman migration of Aussies to Wellington will be well underway. The goal is Beervana, New Zealand’s biggest craft beer festival,…
The Kings of Queenscliff
An iconic Victorian hotel which only started stocking a handful of local craft beers a few years back has been awarded the Best Beer List title for 2014 in the Australian Wine List of the Year awards.…
Crafty's Book Is Out!
It’s International Beer Day! No, we’re not really sure what it’s all about either, but what we do know is that it coincides with the launch of the new book by Crafty Pint founder James…
The Pondering Pint: Rating Beers
The other day, an email arrived about a new beer that was the result of a collaboration between breweries. There were two attachments both purporting to be about said beer. A cursory glance showed that…
Band of Brewers
"It was only a matter of time before something like Band of Brewers happened in Brisbane. There’s an unfathomable amount of beer love around town so it should be no real surprise that local craft brewers…
The Best Of Aussie Craft
A new competition that will allow Australian craft brewers to pit their beers against each others launches next week. The inaugural Craft Beer Awards: the Best of Australian Brewing is a new venture by…
Copy That
There is an American style India pale ale brewed in the heart of WA’s Swan Valley that took home the trophy for Champion Australian Beer at this year’s Australian International Beer Awards. By name…
Australia's Craft Beer Festivals
Australia is home to beer festivals of every size and shape. This page is updated with details of the best of them, along with freebies for Crafty members.
Craft On The Rise
New figures just released from a nationwide survey seem to support what we know: craft beer is on the march. Figures from a pool of approximately 20,000 Australians questioned about a range of habits by…
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Melbourne's Top Pubs
Several of Melbourne’s top craft beer venues were among those honoured at the inaugural Time Out Melbourne Pub Awards. Pub of the Year went to The Terminus in Fitzroy North, People’s Choice went to…
Beer Me In, Scotty
Technology has been used to enhance beer tastings in Australia before. Venues such as The Local Taphouse St Kilda have beamed in brewers and experts via Skype or other means to take part in their appreciation…
Barossa Beer Is SA's Best
An IPA from a brewery located in the heart of South Australian wine country has taken out the top beer prize at this week’s Royal Adelaide Beer Awards. The Canis Majoris from Barossa Valley Brewing,…
A Very Crafty Beer Book
In a couple of weeks, copies of 150 Great Australian Beers – Your Guide To Craft Beer and Beyond will appear on shelves across Australia. It is written by the founder of The Crafty Pint, James Smith,…
The Bigger They Are...
One of the new breed of high quality New South Wales micros is celebrating after coming out on top in a two-year battle with one of the world’s global brewing giants. SABMiller India, a subsidiary of…
Getting Blind With Crafty: Porter
After a six-month hiatus instigated by a combination of incapacitation at Crafty Towers, a disgusting workload and then the inexorable passage of time, we finally got the Blind Tasting show back on the…
Drinking In Style: Porter
After a rather lengthy break, we reconvened the Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel at the weekend for a look at porters. As ever, before publishing the results, here we have our Resident Beer Scholar, Chris…
Sylvanian Family Ties
There’s a minor obsession in the craft beer world with market share. Depending on who you believe, and which breweries you argue should be lumped in with the crafty crowd, in Australia the figure is…
Taking On The Taps
Such is the rapid growth rate of craft beer today, it is enough of a challenge trying to stay up-to-date with every new Australian beer release, let alone the hundreds arriving from overseas. Thus, while…
A Pint of Parma, Please
For the most part, the ever-growing band of people who have taken advantage of Cavalier’s “community brewery” is as you’d expect. The brewery based in Melbourne’s west, which allows others to…
Good Beer Week '15 Dates
The dates have been confirmed for next year’s Good Beer Week festival in Melbourne and Victoria. The organisers today announced that the fifth festival will run from May 16 to 24. Registrations for…
James Halliday Feature: The New Wave
Having just sent off our latest feature to James Halliday’s Wine Companion Magazine – this one looking at the rise of communal / community (whatever we’re going to call it) brewing in Australia,…
Moving Home
The Australian National Homebrewing Conference is on the move. As the fourth conference approaches, the baton has been passed from the organising team in Melbourne to a crew in Canberra, who will take…
Stone Cold Certainties
As an independent craft brewer, it’s fair to say that when you own a grain silo you’ve made it. So, when you’ve got two grain silos, well... Such is the situation these days for Stone & Wood,…
Mismatch Makers
At the start of last summer, the first beers went through the system at Big Shed Brewing. But not all of them were brewed by Big Shed’s founders Jason Harris and Craig Basford. The pair had always planned…
Crafting A Win
Several of Sydney’s craftiest venues were among the big winners at last night’s Time Out Sydney Pub Awards. It wasn’t too long ago that beer lovers were bemoaning the lack of quality…
Feathering Their Nest
The departure lounge at LAX airport in Los Angeles may not seem the most likely setting for the birthplace of an Australian brewery, but it was while awaiting a flight back from last year’s Craft Brewers…
Man About Town
We catch up with Brisbane man about town Gavin Croft as he prepares to launch his first beers under the Croft Brewing banner. It comes after years working in and around the beer industry and sees him launch with the pink and fruity Saison Grenade.
Sip & Savour in Sydney
The teams behind some of Australia’s biggest beer festivals are joining forces to bring Sydneysiders a major event to close out this year’s Sydney Craft Beer Week. Sip & Savour will bring…
Get Bent
For months now, many Canberrans have driven, walked or ridden agonisingly along the inner Northern suburb streets of hip Braddon, eagerly awaiting the opening of BentSpoke Brewing Co, Canberra’s newest…
A Spooning Spectacular
There can be little doubt that the past month saw more collaborations taking place across Australia than at any previous time. With so many international brewers flying into the country for Good Beer Week…
#PoO14 Winners
As part of the biggest Pint of Origin yet, at this year’s Good Beer Week we ran our first PoO Comp. The ten participating venues were invited to put together a prize for punters that visited their…
Good Beer Week 2014 Review: GBW Presents Mega Dega II
At the 2013 festival, Good Beer Week introduced the Mega Dega as the headline event in its Foodie stream. The idea was to bring together chefs from a number of Melbourne’s top restaurants and pair…
From Cider To Rider
There are clear advantages to having a home brewery in a garage that faces onto the street. For one, there’s the opportunity for a spot of people watching while the boil does its thing. What’s more,…
Brew & A: 3 Ravens
Perhaps the most striking aspect at this year’s Australian International Beer Awards was the level of success enjoyed by many of Australia’s most established microbreweries. OK, two trophies for Korea’s…
Sounding La Sirène
For the second year running, the crowds that rocked up over three days to this year’s Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular during Good Beer Week proved themselves to be a sweet-toothed bunch. Last year,…
Good Beer Week 2014 Review: Game of Cones
Good Beer Week 2014 saw craft beer enter new territories once more. Nothing was sacred, not even Victoria’s tourism icons. On the opening weekend, Hargreaves Hill took Oregon’s Deschutes on…
Good Beer Week 2014 Review: Woods of the North
It was a pretty great Good Beer Week for the breweries operating out of Theobald Street in Thornbury. The brewery’s original inhabitants, 3 Ravens, were named Champion Small Australian Brewery and…
Good Beer Week 2014 Review: De Vrolijke Boot
Short of unintended consumption when forced into cleaning out a horse’s stable once as a child or possible face plants into bales at music festivals, it is hard to recall hay having passed the Crafty…
Murray's Dark Beer Month
The Bicep is set to return! Despite Murray’s head brewer’s Shawn Sherlock’s insistence that last year’s release of the beer we initially created with the Port Stephens Brewery for…
Good Beer Week 2014 Review: Boatrocker Palate Cleanser
Hmmm… Looks like there may be a bit of love for Boatrocker within the Crafty team. Here’s Pia “girlplusbeer / Crafty Pint WA” Poynton’s take on Sunday’s Good Beer Week…
AIBA 2014 Winners
The state that kickstarted Australia’s craft beer revival and the one that’s doing most to drive it forward are both celebrating following the results of the 2014 Australian International Beer Awards…
Good Beer Week 2014 Review: GBW Presents Brew vs Cru
At the 2013 Good Beer Week, late into the evening at the Brooklyn Brewery Party at the Great Northern, the New York brewery’s GM Eric Ottaway said that if they could get their brewmaster to the 2014…
Good Beer Week 2014 Review: Temple x Weihenstephan Brewligious Experience
The head brewer from the world’s oldest brewery, Frank Peifer of Weihenstephan, returned to Temple in Brunswick East for his second collaborative brew there. The Crafty Pint crew (VIC and WA) went…
Defining The Future
The second Australian Craft Brewers Conference kicked off at the Arts Centre in Melbourne this morning with a keynote speech from one of the country’s craft beer pioneers, Phil Sexton (above). The…
Good Beer Week 2014: Sold Out Events
Not long now until the fourth Good Beer Week kicks off and the number of sellouts is mounting. As in past years, as part of our role as the festival’s online media partner, we’re keeping an…
Good Beer Week 2014 Review: Russian Imperial Banquet
Talk about putting the boss to shame… At some point, we plan to bring you write ups of the Masterclass of Madness and Brew vs Cru but already – within hours of the event finishing –…
Good Beer Week 2014 Review: GBW Presents Masterclass of Madness
Event: Good Beer Week Presents the Masterclass of Madness Venue: Moon Dog Brewery and Rockwell & Sons Date: May 17 Good Beer Week Stream: Beer Geek The Event: This was the third Good Beer Week local/international…
The Unholy Trinity's Back
Back in 2011, when Good Beer Week first started out, one of the festival’s founders had another spark of inspiration. As a means of bringing attention to the week and also to highlight the community…
Good Beer Week 2014 Preview: Daytime Offerings
With Good Beer Week in full swing and more visitors arriving in Melbourne by the day, for the final of our themed previews of this year’s festival we thought we would look at the daytime events on…
