As Local Beer Day approaches, The Crafty Pint team has been celebrating some of the people who make the Aussie beer community what it is through the Local Beer Legends series. And now it's the turn of the country's beer lovers.
We're launching My Favourite Local: a chance for people to nominate the local pub, bar, brewery, bottleshop, beer or person that they love the most, the one that best encapsulates all that's great about the Australian beer scene.
To shine a light on your favourite local, simply post a photo, photo carousel or video on Instagram explaining why you've chosen them. Make sure you tag @craftypint and the business or person you've chosen as well as #localbeerday and #myfavouritelocal.
Thanks to our mates at Carwyn Cellars (pictured above), there's prizes up for grabs too: three Local Legends packs featuring some epic Aussie beers worth more than $600 in total.
A panel of judges from The Crafty Pint and Carwyn Cellars will select our three favourite posts ahead of February 24; they could be the most creative, those featuring the most heartfelt reasons for choosing your favourite local, or the posts that entertain us the most.
We'll feature the top three posts and the people behind them on The Crafty Pint and our socials and, what's more, we'll give a year's free listing in The Crafty Pint's Find Beer directory to the business associated with the winning post.
The Local Legends Packs
The team at Carwyn Cellars have taken a deep dive unearth some delicious and deliciously rare vintage beers for the Local Legends prize packs. There's three up for grabs: the first prize pictured above and two runners-up prizes you can check out below.
First Prize
- 3 Ravens Wild Ravens Old Red Ale 2016 (750ml(
- Mountain Culture x Imperial Logic Imperial Pastry Stout (500ml)
- Moo Brew x Archie Rose 2018 Bourbon BA Imperial Stout (330ml)
- Hawkers x Carwyn Cellars Forgotten Cask 2018 Imperial Stout (500ml)
- Moon Dog Jumping The Shark 2015 (375ml)
- Wildflower Amber Batch #3 2017 (750ml)
- Black Arts Golden Wild Ale Batch #1 (750ml)
- Two Metre Tall Cleansing Ale 2015 Release (375ml)
Total value: $300-plus
Runners-Up Prizes
- Boatrocker Ramjet 2019 (330ml)
- Hawkers Five Imperial Stout 2020 (500ml)
- Mountain Culture x Imperial Logic Collab Imperial Pastry Stout (500ml)
- Wildflower St Phoebe Raspberry 2019 (375ml)
- Two Metre Tall Sour Cherry Barrel Aged 2019 Release (750ml)
Total Value: $150-plus
How To Enter
Just follow these simple steps:
- Post a photo, photo carousel or video on Instagram explaining why you've picked your entry in My Favourite Local
- Tag @craftypint, the business or person you've nominated, #localbeerday and #myfavouritelocal
- Make sure you get your entries in by February 22
The winners from all entries will be selected by the judging panel and announced on February 23 ahead of Local Beer Day – a celebration of local beer from local brewers at the best local venues supported by the Independent Brewers Association – on February 24.
Good luck!
View our competition rules here. Photo at top features (left to right): Ben Carwyn, Brenton Eddy and Ben Duval.
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.
