Last time Good Beer Week rolled around, back in May 2019, we added a new element to our pocket of the festival, Pint of Origin. It combined the roaming exploration of the world's best beers via many of Melbourne's best venues with one of our favourite things: blind tastings.
The inaugural Pint of Origin IPA Championship saw the crowd at a sold out event crown Adelaide's Big Shed as champs for The Hazing NEIPA. When the festival returns after a year off, we'll be back with a second Championship at The Palace Hotel in South Melbourne, home of SA's brewers for Pint of Origin for many a year.
You can book tickets for the event from 9am AEDT on March 29 here, but we'd also like your help choosing which beers will be put into battle against each other.
As with the 2019 event, the plan is to feature one IPA from each region that's part of Pint of Origin this year (see below for the lineup). It's a slightly smaller field than in 2019 due to issues in sourcing beers from a couple of parts of the planet due to this pesky pandemic, but will still allow us to showcase more than a dozen cracking beers. And, provided there's some fresh Hazing doing the rounds, we'll bring the 2019 winner back to defend its crown.
Unlike the blind tastings we run with expert panels where we typically judge tightly to style, here we're happy to open the field to all manner of IPAs – just the ones you love the most and feel should get the chance to be crowned champ.
All we require is for you to pop in the name – brewery and beer – of those you'd like to see featured in the form below. Don't worry if you don't want to enter beers for every option, just make as many or as few suggestions as you'd like.
The only criteria (other than the beers being some form of IPA) are:
- The beers must be available in Australia at the time of the festival
- They must be packaged – can or bottle
OK then, let's see what you've got!
VOTE FOR YOUR FAVE IPAs
Buy tickets for the event here, check out the full Pint of Origin lineup here, and the rest of the program for the tenth Good Beer Week here.
Pint of Origin Venues for 2021
Here's your lineup for May 14 to 23:
- WA – The Royston, Richmond
- SA – The Palace Hotel, South Melbourne
- Melbourne – The Terminus, Fitzroy North
- Regional Victoria – Cherry Tree, Cremorne
- Tasmania – The Lincoln Hotel, Carlton
- Sydney – The Rainbow, Fitzroy
- Regional NSW – The Woodlands, Coburg
- Queensland – The Park, Abbotsford
- The Territories (ACT & NT) – Miss Moses, Brunswick
- NZ – The Catfish, Fitzroy
- USA – Carwyn Cellars, Thornbury
- Canada – Mr West, Footscray
- UK – Whitehart Bar, Melbourne CBD
- Scandinavia – Beermash, Collingwood
