If a picture says a thousand words, then many millions have been spoken over the past decade in beer...

After kicking off our tenth anniversary coverage with a long read on the genesis of the site, today we're switching tack. We've taken a trip down Memory Lane, making our way through thousands of photos from the past decade (and wondering where the hell we've stored many more).

We've compiled them into themed montages (cos even Rocky had a montage) and will aim to share more on socials with the #tenyearsofcrafty tag as the series progresses.

We'd love to see your favourite photos and memories from the past decade too. If you share them on socials with that tag and tag The Crafty Pint – @craftypint on Instagram, @thecraftypint on Facebook and Twitter – we'd love to feature some on the site to close out this tenth anniversary coverage. We'll even give a lifetime membership to our beer club, The Crafty Cabal, to the winner too.*

So, settle in, grab a beer, and embrace the nostalgia! You should be able to zoom into the photos on phone and laptop alike.

 Good Beer Week

The tenth Good Beer Week has been delayed, but here's a few happy snaps from the festival I was lucky enough to help create and, for a few years, help run as festival director.

Clockwise from top left:

• A Pint of Origin lineup at Brother Burger in 2015
• Heading onto Eat It on 3RRR in 2011 with co-founder Barney Matthews
• The GBW crew after a closing night dinner at Kumo in 2013
• ElbowSkin record Beer Song, which came about when I was catching up with Dave Adams at the footy for the first time after we'd celebrated the Pies' flag the previous October. I mentioned I was starting a beer festival; "Oh, we've just written a beer song..."
• Sam Füss (now Philter's head brewer) leads a boat trip around Port Phillip Bay
• The 36 Collective plan the menu for a Masterclass of Champions collab brew event
• Some of the GBW crew attending GABS in 2012
• The first Hair Of The Dog Breakfast hosted by Beermen.tv in 2011
• Cask Off No.1 at Holgate Brewhouse
• GBW ambassador Miro Bellini shoots the shit with Garrett Oliver at The Terminus on opening night in 2013
• Adrian from BrewSmith takes the program on tour to Uluru
• The 2013 Golden Ticket winner Torben Vedelsby; I hope you've recovered, mate...
• Rob Kaboord talking beer and food pairing at last year's Vrolijke Boot lunch at Boatrocker
• Mrs Pint and I with co-founder Kate Paterson's dad's pimped out car
• Year two coasters
• Will Delmont spraying the 2013 tagline on the walls of Carwyn Cellars
• The GBW banner spanning the Tullamarine Freeway into Melbourne from the airport

Tastings

Blind tastings – either within the team with experts from the beer world or as public events – have become a central part of what we do (pre-COVID at least). We love to encourage people to judge beers on what their senses tell them rather than on pre-conceived opinions or, these days, hype. Indeed, once we're able to again, I'd love to run a hype-themed blind tasting. For now, however, a few photos from down the years.

Clockwise from top left:

• The lineup for the first blind tasting I did with mates before realising they were a great idea to take further
• Settling in for a guided tasting at CUB's HQ (for a story I've still not got around to writing...)
• The aftermath of the last imperial stout blind tasting; well, what do you expect?
• The ever-dependable Guy Southern helping out at one of many blind tastings we've done at The DTC for WA Beer Week
• The sensory legend that is Tina Panoutsos takes the Crafty team through a sensory session as part of our Weekender get together last year
• Another WA Beer Week tasting
• The panel deep in a past sours blind tasting
• One of the first tasting events I went to – at Slowbeer; I think I may have written about it for The Age
• Catching team member Scott Kirkaldy unawares at the end of one of our Bendigo On The Hop blind tastings in 2019
• Taking the tastings to Sydney Beer Week at The Oak Barrel
• Possibly the first ever public blind tasting we ran: at The Wheaty in Adelaide

Miscellaneous Good Times

I couldn't think of another name for this collection, but it's one of my favourite nevertheless.

Clockwise from top left:

• Just a photo I love: the former coach and captain getting together as Brewmanity launched another fundraiser for FightMND
• The Grain Store crew getting innovative with "growlers" well before COVID-19 forced people's hands
• I have no idea why my face is on a tap at the Great Northern
• A few Pint of Origins ago, the only region without a visiting brewer for a Meet The Brewer session was Scandinavia. So I asked the only Scandinavian I knew who was likely to be game, Matthias, if he'd dress up as someone from ABBA. He brought his ukelele along to Beermash, of course...
• A young Crafty Pot Sr in front, Barney Matthews (then of Beer DeLuxe) with one of BrewDog's End Of History beers en route to David Walsh at MONA
• Nail's John Stallwood starting a Clout Stout vintage in Brendan Varis of Feral's backyard
• The man who introduced me to the Aussie beer world
• The Mountain Goat flood of 2011
• Late on at the late Mill on Constance
• Announcing the rebrand of The Crafty Pint at the warehouse that nows houses Bodriggy
• The beer industry opens up many opportunities; here I was able to introduce Max Allen to Brendan O'Sullivan at 3 Ravens so they could share stories of fermentation
• Sam Füss getting her koala on at the first GABS at The Local Taphouse in 2011
• Dressed as a ship's captain for a Pint of Origin bus tour a few years back; hours later, our roaming Tassie writer Bert Spinks, who I'd met for the first time that day, was wearing the outfit...
• A pirate (miss you, Michael!)
• Wet-hopped Crafty
• Miro Bellini in an early GBW promo video
• Holgate launch their first Millennium Falcon at the old Belgian Beer Café; Darth Vader is now head brewer at Mountain Goat and under the cloak is Dan Dainton

The Crafty Cabal

It's been a little odd over the past few months, given we've been unable to host any physical events for members of our beer club, The Crafty Cabal. The last were those that featured Otherside in Freo and Boatrocker in Brisbane on the same day, not long before the nationwide shutdown. We kick off online events next week (which will continue even once we can do physical events) and are focusing on building the offer for the new normal. In the meantime, some happy snaps from a few of the events to date...

Clockwise from top left:

• The Melbourne launch party at Foresters, complete with Clout Stout as one of the free kegs pouring...
• The wall of cans at KAIJU!
• Balter give Cabalistas a sneak preview of their original Hazy before launching it to the public
• A cellar tasting with Holgate and Bridge Road one Bendigo On The Hop eve (because that's just what you need the night before a beer festival...)
• Fi Nolle from Dollar Bill helps us welcome Cabal members to Good Beer Week 2019
• Lewis from Pirate Life leads a brewery tour at the start of what was one of the more raucous events to date at the old Pirate Life brewery
• Inside the belly of the beast at Modus Operandi
• Couldn't run this without a photo of the Clark brothers (with their mate Garry in the middle); legendary members!
• Opening up the joint Feral / Nail tour and (lots of) tasting at their Bassendean brewery
• Cabal keyrings in the bowl...
• Taking a look inside Stomping Ground weeks before they opened to the public
• Wild Blend – playing with Tallboy & Moose barrels to agree the blend for a new release
• Brewing The Landlady with Jade at The Wheaty
• Serenading Crafty Pot Jr on his first birthday, which I somehow double booked with the Brisbane launch at The Scratch
• Oscar McMahon being delightful on our evening at Young Henrys

AWARDS TIME

As the beer world has grown and become busier, it's become ever harder to catch up with people, making the various awards nights around the country (pre-COVID) great chances to catch up with old mates (and make new ones). Here's a few shots from over the years.

Clockwise from top left:

• Renn Blackman's face when they took out Champion Small Brewery at the Australian International Beer Awards (AIBA) in May 2019 is up there with my favourite awards photos of the entire decade
• BentSpoke's Richard Watkins and former Feral owner Brendan Varis in a past AIBA video
• The winners from the Craft Beer Awards (now The Indies) when it took place at the Adelaide Oval in 2017
• Beer writer and Seven Sheds founder Willie Simpson pays tribute to industry pioneer Geoff Scharer after he passed away in 2012
• Rodenbach's Filip Sneppe, Hawkers co-founder and Rumi owner Joseph Abboud and Mountain Goat's Dave Bonighton in 2015
• A photo that pretty much sums up beer awards nights: Two Birds' Dani Allen and Jayne Lewis with then brewer Wilson Hede celebrate their trophy while their team and mates enter into the spirit(s?)
• Burleigh, Redoak and Stone & Wood celebrate Aussie success at the World Beer Cup in 2012
• Balter head brewer Scotty Hargrave and Green Beacon head brewer Johann van der Walt celebrate their Champion Brewery trophies last year; now they're stablemates at Asahi / CUB
• Stone & Wood's Pacific Ale is named Best Aussie Beer in the first Critic's Choice book, with an event held at The Local Taphouse in St Kilda
• The view from the stage at The Beeries 2019, Brisbane's beer community awards
• A young Sean Symons (White Lakes Brewing) judging at the Perth awards in 2011
• Crafty contributor Marie Claire Jarratt "collecting" her Best Media award at the AIBAs in 2019, presented by the previous winner, our senior writer Will Ziebell
• A very heavily pregnant Jaz Wearin of Modus Operandi receiving another trophy for the brewery at the 2018 Indies

On The Road

Putting this feature together hasn't half served as a reminder of just how much the novel coronavirus has fucked everything up. But we could travel once...

Clockwise from top left:

• Touring Thornbridge in the UK with a youthful Caolan Vaughan, now head brewer at Stone & Wood
• Cornering Garrett Oliver at a Brooklyn bar shout at the Blind Tiger in New York and asking for a little spruiking assistance
• Inside Hong Kong's Black Kite – eleven stories up from ground level
• Buxton Brewery founder Geoff Quinn pouring a cask sample of his black IPA back before his brewery became a big name on the global scene
• Unreleased cellar samples with Jean van Roy at Cantillon
• A first meeting with my favourite beer writer, Pete Brown, at his local in Stoke Newington. That we've since done an event together in Melbourne is one of those things that keeps me pinching myself!
• Trying to keep up to speed on the UK beer scene on a visit to see family
• On tour with fellow Aussie beer folks at a past Craft Brewers Conference in Washington DC
• Many of my favourite reads on Crafty have come from Bert Spinks, who typically spends half the year travelling. Here he caught up with Hungarian craft beer pioneer Gergely Kővári
• Crafty contributor Marie Claire Jarratt beside herself that we've blagged her an access all areas tour of Rodenbach
• On the road to Beervana back in 2014
• My dad settles in for an evening of strong beers, unreleased spirits and outlandish tales with Urbain from Struise Brouwers
• One of the Baladin bars Mick Wust visited on a tour through Italy

Beer Events

While Good Beer Week devoured half of the last decade on a personal level, it's just one of the incredible array of events beer lovers have been able to enjoy around Australia over the past decade.

Clockwork from top left:

• Beermash and Bonny's Shayne Dixon and Victorian craft beer pioneer Scott Wilson-Browne of Red Duck at Bendigo On The Hop 2015, always one of the best days out of the year
• An early High Country Hops in Beechworth – who'd have thought we'd had a festival dedicated to the hop harvest, let alone several, ten years ago?
• Wayward's winning stand from last year's GABS Sydney
• Hosting a panel at one of the earlier Beer & BBQ Festivals in Adelaide
• The Fresh Hop Festival in Launceston; here's hoping there's a way to bring it back as it was a celebration of Tasmania as much as hops and beer
• WA brewer Jackson Beavis easing himself into the festival vibes (photo by Pia Poynton)
• Wildflower's Topher Boehm chatting to competition winners at a past GABS
• They do podcasts differently out west; with the Beer Sucks crew
• In bed with Black Hops' brewer Govs and Smokey from Currumbin Valley Brewing at last year's Beer InCider in Brisbane. No, I'm not sure how either
• Brewers warming up for the 2017 Craft Brewers Conference (photo by Pia Poynton)
• The first (and last) sit down dinner in the Fed Square Atrium when we co-hosted Festival Of The Frothy beer trivia for The Crafty Pint's first birthday
• Tassie brewers gather during a very early Good Beer Week at what was their home for many years, the late Gertrude Hotel
• Backstage at a Women of Beer event that predated the launch of the Pink Boots Society in Australia
• Watching Peep Tempel in a farm shed during a past GBW
• A pre-Tallboy & Moose Steve Germain getting into the Tasmanian International Beer Festival spirit

Get It Together

Collaboration brews used to be a genuine rarity; today, you see multiple released every week. We'll take a look back at the history of collabs in Australia later in the year but here's a few from the past decade.

Clockwise from top left:

• The Schwartz (now Sydney) Brewery team create what may have been the first international collab in NSW with Anders Kissmeyer in 2012
• We somehow ended up with some legends of the Brazilian beer industry – Bodebrown and friends – coming to Good Beer Week in 2013 so arranged for them to brew a beer with Hargreaves Hill
• Mountain Goat working on beers with Mick Thomas (Weddings, Parties, Anything) and Henry Wagons. I believe most of the latter's Peanut Butter & Jelly went down the drain after the launch event!
• The Smith Street Band join Fixation for the 2018 Beer InCider collab
• The GBW Masterclass of Champions in 2015 brew day event saw KAIJU!, Edge, Evil Twin and Baird Beer gather at Hawkers
• La Sirène and Jester King laid down two beers in 2018 (I have to include this as we filmed an interview with them on the day and I've still not got around to editing it...)
• An early Pink Boots Society brew at Young Henrys in WA, now Beerfarm's home
• Gavin Croft looks on as Ben Nichols (Scratch / Netherworld) works on a past Brewsvegas beer at Newstead
• The original Abbey Collabby brew day featuring Moon Dog and CUB at Mountain Goat for the first Good Beer Week in 2011
• The brewers of South West gather for a brew in 2013 – one of many they've done as the industry there has grown. Photo by Jessica Shaver
• Arch-collaborator Stu McKinlay of the Yeastie Boys lays down a collab at Young Henrys, who have led the way when it comes to brewing with people outside the beer industry
• Old World meets New as the world's oldest established brewery, Weihenstephan, create a beer with Temple (their second collab) in 2014

Time for a paddlin'

As I made my way through all the photos (mine and those submitted by team members) I noticed there were a lot of tasting paddles. So why not!

Clockwise from top left: BentSpoke; Cheeky Monkey; Wild Hop; Westside Ale Works; Wilson Brewing; the OG SpecTAPular in February 2011; Good Beer Week Festival Beer tasters; The Dutch Trading Co's Double Dutch Rudder; lining them up at Lobethal Bierhaus; Smiling Samoyed's old vinyl paddles; Forest Lodge's more classical approach; The Petersham Bowling Club; Murray Robinson (now of 3 Ravens) sets out to sample every GAB Festival beer while wearing top hat and tails; beer and gin paddles at Loch Brewery & Distillery; Guy Southern brings me a paddle at Blasta, which I promptly knock over myself after attempting to use a metal menu to shade them from the lunchtime sun...

The Evolution of the H100 podium

One of the more unusual occurrences of the past decade has been the way in which a fun project one countdown day to occupy my then three-year-old daughter would turn into a bout of oneupmanship with myself. This year, we even sent the podium to Sydney for the hero shot (and it's now stored in GABS' warehouse awaiting the next countdown).

Well, the plan was to include a collection of photos documenting beer and food highlights as well as trips to various hop fields and farms, but time is up. That said, we'll likely sneak some more in before this is over...

We're running a series of features looking back over the past decade of beer in Australia to mark ten years of The Crafty Pint. Tomorrow see us take a look at the growth of the industry and changes in ownership. We'll collect all the articles here.

*If an existing Cabal member wins, we'll switch them to a free membership. Competition rules are here.

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.

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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.

Articles by James