Today, we’re delighted to unveil something we’ve been working on for a number of months: a vastly reworked and enhanced version of The Crafty Pint.
The new site is effectively The Crafty Pint III and, as with Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, we’re confident the third instalment is the best.
Aside from making the site much cleaner, prettier and more pleasurable to use on your phone, we’ve altered the structure too. The new format makes it easier for readers to find what they’re looking for while making full use of what we’ve created over the past 13 years in a manner we believe makes perfect sense.
The biggest change other than the new aesthetic is the creation of two new sections: Beer Knowledge and Beer Industry.
Beer Knowledge is designed to be the best online resource for all things beer and brewing in Australia. We’ve been through all 3,000-plus articles we’ve published since 2010, putting them into one of ten categories.
It was one heck of a task but also a thoroughly enjoyable journey back through this remarkable period for beer in Australia. We rediscovered cute features on some of the major players in craft beer today back when they were fresh-faced babies brewing their first batch or just about to open their first venue; look out for a new series inspired by these origin stories. It was also fascinating to be reminded just how prominent Nøgne Ø were here for a few years…
If you’re specifically interested in, for example, beer styles, how beer is made, beer travel, sustainability, the people behind the beers you love, or want to gain insight on how the industry operates, the Beer Knowledge section will guide you to the right place.
The new Beer Industry section brings together three elements that have long been part of what we do under the one roof: Industry News, Jobs & Classifieds, and our Business Directory. The aim is to better help those working in, or hoping to work in, the beer industry find the business contacts, jobs and announcements they don’t want to miss.
We’ve always created original articles of relevance to beer consumers and those in the industry and many articles will still appear both on the main Beer News page and Industry News. But the new setup allows us to keep more consumer-focused articles in one place while creating a new home for industry-specific news and updates.
After all, at The Crafty Pint we believe that, like craft beer itself, beer journalism is for everyone. Whether you’ve just discovered your first delicious craft beer and want to learn more, or you've been running a brewery or beer bar for years, our mission has always been to make The Crafty Pint a place where we can entertain, educate and enlighten readers, playing a positive role in the creation of a better and bigger craft beer community in Australia.
There are still a few new additions in the pipeline, but we couldn’t wait any longer to share the new Crafty with you.
Acknowledgements
They say it takes a village to raise a child and it’s certainly taken a few very patient souls to help us reach this point.
First and foremost, I want to thank our web developer, Daniel Thornbury. He’s been working with us since the original Crafty Pint site evolved into The Crafty Pint II, as well as creating the Good Beer Week and Pint of Origin sites.
I’m pretty sure he now regrets ever uttering the words: “I’ve been thinking we really need to redesign the site…” late last year given how long this has taken – and how often I’ve kept going back with another: “What about if we did this…?” But he’s done an amazing job and is a great guy to work with too.
When it comes to aesthetics, they’re the responsibility of two key players: Jessie Jungalwalla and the Craft Instinct team; and George Levi, who created the icons designed to help guide people through the site. While we wanted to make the site much cleaner, we didn’t want to lose its personality and the combination of Jessie’s overarching vision with George’s quirky illustrations have nailed that brief.
Thanks also to Cryer Malt and Bintani, who have come on board as the first two Presenting Partners for our Beer Knowledge section. Both have long been supporters of not just The Crafty Pint but also the wider beer community; at a time when the local industry is going through its toughest period since we launched the site, such partnerships are crucial in helping our team of award-winning writers continue to produce high quality, original stories worth telling. We look forward to announcing more Presenting Partners in the coming weeks.
And, of course, we wouldn’t be approaching our 13th anniversary if it wasn’t for our readers, without whom we’d be yelling into the void. If you like what we’ve done, feel free to share the new-look site with your mates – or your staff if you run a beer business – as we’re all about fostering a wide, wise and welcoming community of beer lovers.
If you’d like to go a step further, you can become a supporter of the site. We’ve introduced the ability for readers to make donations, with every dollar helping us pay the writers, designers and illustrators who bring these stories to life. And if you’d prefer to make a donation that unlocks additional benefits, you can join the hundreds of beer-loving legends who are members of our beer club, The Crafty Cabal.
Anyway, enough talk from us. Get clicking and scrolling and if you’ve any feedback on the new site, feel free to share it with us.
Cheers!
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.
