Bottle shop racks are no longer stacked solely by the old-school Aussie ales of yore like VB, Fosters or Cascade. Now we see fridges full of cheeky experiments, and styles taken from foreign lands.
Dozens of craft brewing companies have sprung up in the past decade to colonise the bottle shop and your tastebuds. Spanning the breadth of the country from Perth to Hobart, Australian beer has a new style: variety.
Your choice is hardly even limited by the adjectives used to describe them.
Golden, dark, pale, summer, winter, Indian, ginger, white, unfiltered – the list goes on.
The big boys have noticed, too, and are jumping on board. Coopers has always had a niche in brewing beers slightly off the beaten track, but with Celebration Ale and the new Artisan Reserve they are well and truly establishing themselves as craft masters.
Melbourne locals, Hawthorn Brewing Co also make a strong showing this issue with their newly released Golden Ale. We spoke to them about tackling a saturated yet thirsty market as independent brewers.
So, hop to it and take a peek inside the new world of Australian brewing, with technique, style and ingredients sourced from far away.