With the hoopla of The Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular behind us and Good Beer Week in full swing, it is time to nail my colours to the mast.
I come from Queensland, arguably the most backward state in terms of good beer in Australia. Things have been changing, just not quickly enough.
However, what we make up for in quantity is more than made up in quality and three of our finest have headed down to Melbourne and Good Beer Week to pit their best against the best of the rest in the Pint of Origin.
Burleigh Brewing, Bacchus Brewing and 4 Hearts Brewing have all taken over the taps at Collingwood’s Baden Powell Hotel and Victorians are in for a few surprises.
As our largest brewery, Burleigh Brewing would already be well know to many. Their 28 Pale Ale is highly regarded as a very drinkable, well balanced American Pale Ale. The brewery has won many awards for its beer, most recently taking the gold medal at the World Beer Cup for their HEF, which will also be on show.
Burleigh is joined by 4 Hearts Brewing’s first foray south, taking their 4 Degrees Pale Ale which and the Summer Wheat, both of which featured in the Local Taphouse’s Hottest 100 this year despite only having been available in Queensland. These beers will be joined by 4 hearts’ IPA, Wein Lager and Coal Miners Stout.
The third and final Queensland brewery is Bacchus Brewing. Unknown to many, this little brewery is making a big noise in Queensland creating some well crafted but incredibly flavoured craft beers. Two of the most highly regarded will be featuring on the takeover and, I think, could easily be the sleeper hits of Good Beer Week amongst those lucky enough to try them. Red Belly Black is a Black IPA that is full, balanced and complex while Bacchus’ Rum Barrel Baltic Porter is a rich Baltic porter that has been aged for a month on cocoa nibs in fresh rum barrels.
Between the selection on offer you have beers for the session and beers to get you talking.
The Baden Powell’s Pint of Origin takeover will last all week with Wednesday night seeing most of the brewers in attendance.
I live 20 metres away. Can’t wait!
We need to catch up!
We did a PoO pub crawl on Saturday – taking in The Great Northern Hotel (WA), The Tramway Hotel (SA), The Rainbow Hotel (NSW) and finished up at The Baden Powell (QLD). They apparently had 12 QLD beers to choose from, but regrettably you wouldn’t have known this as there was no beer list, nor had the taps had their decals changed.
When we asked the barman if he had a list he said no, and asked us ‘what sort of beer we liked’ to which we replied ‘all’ – so with a sigh, he then started to rattle off all 12 beers with a short description. By the time he got to the end of the list, i’d forgotten what No.1 was. I did have a little grizzle about this on Twitter, lamenting the fact that it would only take 15-30 mins to cut-and-paste a beer list and tasting notes together – but i’m not sure if they’ve done this yet.
I appreciate that this is the first year for GoodBeerWeek, and there’s bound to be some teething problems (e.g. The Rainbow Hotel crew (NSW) thought GBW started on the Monday, so didn’t have all their taps switched, The Courthouse Hotel (TAS) was closed for a function all Sunday – which was disappointing as that was the only pub we didn’t cross off our PoO list). So hopefully kinks like these will have been ironed out next year.
All in all though I had a great time attending both GABS and the various PoO venues – well worth the trip South!