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Crafty Crawls: Ballarat City Guide
Each summer, Ballarat attracts thousands of beer fanciers to its City Oval for its annual festival. But, with four breweries and a growing number a craft venues, there's plenty of reason for beer lovers to visit at other times.
Get Fresh
It's hop harvest time across Australia. And this year's offers more chances than ever to get up close and personal with the little green flowers, not least thanks to a pair of festivals celebrating the harvest and fresh hops beers.
Cabal Update - 20.01.17
New year, new beers, new offers! The Crafty Cabal is kicking into action for 2017, and there are plenty of cool events and offers in the wings to grab the attention of our existing and future Cabalistas.
The Crafty Dozen – December 2016
Our latest roundup of the latest breweries, venues and bottleshops added to our directories is actually more of a baker's dozen as we got a little ahead ourselves. So here's the last 13 of the 73 new additions to the site in 2016.
Best New Victorian Beers of 2016
Each year, we assemble panels of experts around the country to come up with lists of the best new releases to come out of Australian breweries in the previous 12 months. This year, we kick off in Victoria, home to the most brewing companies in the land.
Cabal Update - 2.12.16
A whole year has passed since the Crafty Cabal was launched into the beerosphere. In that time, we've given away more than $10K in tickets and beers, poured 25 kegs for members, hosted 14 events – and it's just getting started.
The Collaborators: Not For Horses
The rise of craft beer has spawned all manner of related businesses. Among them are small malting operations dedicated to providing malt for microbreweries. They include Not For Horses. Bert Spinks caught up with the man behind the Launceston business.
Bridge Road's Robust Result
Bridge Road's Ben Kraus is one of the Australian beer world's most innovative brewery owners. Yet it's one of his oldest brews that has brought triumph at this year's Sydney Royal Beer & Cider Show.
Mead Made Modern
A tiny number of Australian brewers have played with mead and braggots, but there's now a small yet growing number of people specialising in these ancient beverages. Marie Claire Jarratt spoke to some of them in her debut article for the site.
Now Is The Sour
While some might have forecast the renaissance that beer has been enjoying globally, would many have predicted the rise of sours? Award-winning writer Michael Donaldson laps up the tsunami of sours breaking on Kiwi shores.
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Brewed With Balls
There's little left for brewers to put into beer. Locally, we've seen squid ink, belly button fluff and whale vomit used, while elsewhere there's been much more besides, as showcased in the new Brewed With Balls book.
Who Brews Valhalla Beers?
For our latest Who Brews...? feature, we head to the Surf Coast where crowd-funding helped Valhalla get off the ground. Their second release is coming soon, while are plans for a taproom on the coast too.
The Big Issue: Branding
As the beer landscape in Australia becomes ever more crowded and competition intensifies, it's not enough simply to brew good beer. How a brewery presents itself and its beers is perhaps more crucial then ever before, so we're addressing branding as our second "Big Issue" topic.
A Decade Of Duck
Red Duck this week marks a decade of brewing. It's been a decade in which boundaries have been pushed and history plundered for inspiration, with spirits next on the agenda.
Beer Travel: Ballarat
It's taken its sweet time but Ballarat is finally developing a beer scene worthy of the name. In advance of the opening of Hop Temple, Ballarat beer lover Clayton Morrison rounds up the city's craftiest spots.
Throwing Open Their Robe
South Australia's newest microbrewery sees historical brewing return to Robe Town as a Latvian couple open the doors of one of the country's most unlikely breweries.
Ten Years Of Cheers
Two stalwarts of the Victorian beer industry celebrated a decade of brewing in recent weeks. Here, Bridge Road and Red Hill look back on ten years of beers and cheers.
Beer Travel: NZ Hops
With the Southern Hemisphere hop harvest coming to a close and fresh hop beers on their way, we chat to the man heading up NZ Hops.
Getting Blind With Crafty: Ambers and Reds
There was much change afoot for our latest Crafty Pint Blind Tasting Panel at the weekend. For a start, it featured an entirely new set of panellists. Each and every one of those who taken part in a previous…
Drinking In Style: Amber and Red Ales
In order to keep pace with the Crafty Pint Tasting Panel, this month's instalment of Drinking In Style takes a look at two styles named for their respective hues: amber and red. If only there were a green ale to complete a brewer's traffic light…
Project X
If you had the last keg of a limited release baltic porter, what would you do? Most of us would grab an empty glass and start pouring but Justin Fox, head brewer at Colonial Brewery, instead saw an opportunity…
Hop Plotting
In their increasingly challenging battle to meet the world’s insatiable desire, hop producers the world over are constantly looking to produce more hops. Not just more in terms of volume, but more in…
The Bicep's Back
It started as a bit of fun. Challenged with brewing an unusual beer for the Media Brew beer competition at Beervana, The Crafty Pint approached Murray’s to be its partner. They agreed and were soon afterwards…
Beer Travel: Hops Spring Eternal
Big brewer: bad; craft brewer: good. It's a hoary old perception and one to which no thoughtful beer drinker would give any credence. Just because beer brand X is ultimately owned by brewing giant Y, it…
James Halliday Article: On The Hop
This week sees the launch of the eighth edition of James Halliday’s Wine Companion Magazine, in which we have an article looking at the Australian craft beer industry’s position in the wider world.…
Beer Travel: A Journey Into Hops
The year was 1824. Beethoven was still alive and composing his symphonies, though you'd need to hear them live because radio wouldn't be invented for about another eight decades. In that year, the MCG…
A Little Green
The people that have done as much as anyone in Oz to introduce drinkers to hops in beer have been playing around a little. Coinciding with this year’s hop harvest, the brewers at Little Creatures attempted…
