The Crafty Pint Podcast

“We want to pay proper homage to the ten years of people that have come and made this their home.” When Wildflower co-founder and visionary Topher Boehm announced he was to close the Marrickville venue the brewers and blenders had called home for a decade, it didn’t just send ripples through the beer world – the story was picked up by mainstream media too. Perhaps that’s only to be expected: in te...

“We’re all from here, and we want to give back.” When Ryefield Hops started producing hops commercially on land formerly used for dairy in the South Coast region, they were the first to do so in New South Wales. A decade on from launching the business, the family operation run by Jade McManus and Morgan and Karen Taylor remains the only grower in the state. Now the third largest producer of hops i...

“Anything that’s happening in our area we try to be a part of.” The Crafty Pint Podcast returns for 2026 in the company of Renn Blackman, one half of the powerhouse husband-and-wife team behind one of the sunniest and funnest breweries in the country. The family influence at Blackman’s runs deeper than just Renn and Jess too: parents and others helped get the business up and running – quite litera...

“The whole craft beer industry is built around community.” We wrap up The Year In Beer 2025 series with a look at what’s been going on in the Canberra region and the Northern Territory. The episode kicks off with James and Will joined by Mat Farrington from CanBEERra for a discussion about openings and closures in and around the capital, some of the festivals large and small he’s enjoyed in 2025,...

“That nostalgia is really hitting super-hard after COVID because everyone really misses going to the pub.” Regular podcast hosts James and Will are on home turf for the last state-based episode of The Year In Beer 2025 series before we wrap up the series in the Territories. While trying not to retread topics covered in the National Trends article and episode, we discuss the year’s openings, closur...

"Breweries who are spending time and effort on making their venue really good and increasing the quality of their beers are doing really well." Our audio-visual travels across the country continue as we reach Queensland in The Year In Beer 2025 series. First up, Will Ziebell is joined by Craig Williams and Mick Wüst, both of whom work with The Crafty Pint. Mick has long been a Crafty contributor,...

“I’d love to see craft beer become a little bit more approachable.” We turn our focus to New South Wales as we hit the midway point in The Year In Beer 2025 series. Crafty Pint contributor and one of the key players in the Inner West Ale Trail , Jason Treuen, kicks things off. As well as discussing the role trails and tourism can play in the local beer world, we cover diversification, rightsizing,...

“People are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.” Having leapt all the way south and east from WA to Tassie, we find ourselves back in the middle of them for the third instalment of our state by state by territories tour of Australia for The Year In Beer 2025. Beer gurus Briony Liebich ( Flavour Logic ) and Steve Brockman ( AMSAT Character Malts / Tour Dad) reprise their starring ro...

For stop two in The Year In Beer series for 2025 , we take a trip across Bass Strait. Tasmania’s beer scene is one that mainlanders tend to have to watch from afar, with just a tiny handful of the dozens of breweries operating there sending beer off the island; indeed, many don’t sell anything too far beyond their own taprooms. The state’s brewing industry did catch the eye of the beer world furth...

The state by state by territories part of The Year In Beer series kicks off, as ever, in Western Australia where we’re joined by Crafty contributors Guy Southern and Jono Outred to give us the lowdown on the state’s beer scene. Their wide-ranging report takes in chaos, collaboration and consolidation, beer venues gaining accolades in the wider hospo world, new openings and big name comebacks, frui...

“This has been a year of holding patterns, of people trying to work out how they fit into the new reality.”   If you’ve read The Year In Beer 2025: National Trends article, you already know many of the topics that are the starting points for discussion as we kick of our end-of-year podcast series. If not, you can check it out here .   This episode gives us an opportunity to expand on man...

“Little Creatures is iconic, and I think we'll always have that iconic status.” Ask people who’ve been working in, or merely enjoying the delights of, the Aussie beer world for a decade or more which beers turned them onto craft beer in the first place, and if any beer is referenced more than Little Creatures Pale Ale we’d be surprised, if not amazed. Little wonder then that Russell Gosling, head...

“You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make good beers. That’s not to say we don’t try.” There’s little like Moo Brew in the Australian beer landscape, however you look at it. The brewery blazed a trail for craft beer in Tasmania and remains something of a figurehead for the state’s beer scene as one of the few breweries with a presence on the mainland. The unique bottles and John Kelly artwork...

"We just like making full-flavoured, unapologetic, big beers.” There’s nothing in the Australian beer world quite like Seeker Brewing . The Wollongong operation was founded by identical twins Jeff and Curtis Argent, our guests on this week’s show, alongside mate Ben Boorer . Prior to running a brewery together, the brothers were in a band together, only denied their dreams of touring overseas by t...

“Our isolation leads to innovation.” In the last of the episodes recorded at the inaugural Grainstock in the Riverina in October, we take a sidestep into the world of spirits, welcoming one of Australian whisky’s true characters onto the show. Tim Duckett, who grew up on a farm in Tasmania’s North West, bought his first barrels of whisky back in 1999, so has been both participant in and observer o...

Jayne Lewis needs little, if any, introduction to anyone that reads or listens to The Crafty Pint. Following stints at many of the country’s brewing trailblazers, she blazed a trail of her own, creating Two Birds Brewing with mate Dani Allen, together going on to conquer the country’s beer awards while inspiring many other women to follow in their footsteps.   Two years on from leaving Two Bi...

“It's a big picture approach. I love it because our kids are going to have a future.” The phrase “more than the sum of its parts” shouldn’t really apply when the parts in question are as significant in their own manner as Wildflower Beer , Organically Greenwood  and Voyager Craft Malt . Yet there can be no denying that these pioneering operations are stronger together – their impact magnified...

"We're all massive grain users – bakers, brewers, distillers – so it's so good to get to connect with them." Grainstock was a first-of-its-kind industry gathering and beer festival celebrating grain, agriculture, brewing, distilling and baking under the one banner. Held at Voyager Craft Malt’s home at the Whitton Malt House over three days, it brought diverse yet linked industries together for far...

“The ethos was trying to provide that cultural shift and be a catalyst for that.” What’s it like brewing beer in paradise? Or, more precisely, in Exmouth: gateway to the Ningaloo Coast World Heritage Area that’s home to awe-inspiring, barely-populated beaches and an abundance of glorious wildlife that can make it feel like you’re living in a David Attenborough documentary. We sat down with Pete Fi...

"Our goal was always to showcase every beer at every brewery as if it was our own." Joslyn Erickson works in a unique but essential part of the beer industry. She runs Hop On Brewery Tours alongside partner Matt Farrelly, which the pair launched nearly a decade ago in Queensland. Back then, Brisbane had only six craft breweries and the Gold Coast was home to just a handful of breweries and venues...

“A lot of my ethos about what I’d like brewing to be is that DIY punk vibe, which is really collaborative.” A year on from Feral’s return to independence , the brewery unveiled a new look, a tightened core range, and a new head brewer, with ex-Beavertown and Beerfarm brewer Charlotte Freeston entrusted with shaping the next chapter in the iconic brand’s story. Ahead of Froth Town 2025, we joined h...

"To see [our barley] from start to finish, and to also see the result in our beers, is something that's pretty beautiful." Michael Stanzel first came to the attention of Australian beer drinkers when he and wife, Chloe Hoiberg, joined Burnley Brewing upon their return to Australia from Germany. While in Europe, he’d trained as a brewer, with those influences shining through many of the releases fr...

“I try to do as few things on purpose as possible.” More than a thousand brewing companies have launched in Australia since the turn of the millennium, but there’s been nothing quite like Evil Mega Corp . The one-man “worker’s-owned Utopia” is the brainchild of Rhys Lopez, formerly head brewer at Otherside Brewing, and it’s fair to say that in the world of Aussie brewers there’s nothing quite like...

“We’re lucky to work in an industry that’s a lot about fun.” This week’s guests need little, if any, introduction. Not only is BentSpoke – the brewery launched in a Braddon brewpub in 2014 and now a national brand – one of the country’s best-loved operations, but its founders have connections with Canberra’s beer scene stretching back three decades. Richard Watkins and Tracy Margrain met while wor...

“Tumut is a bit of a hidden gem still and one of the things we're trying to do is help put it on the map via the brewery.” Late in 2024, two former employees took ownership of Tumut River Brewing Co , a brewpub-based operation at the gateway to the Snowy Mountains that had gone into liquidation. Michael Cichocki and Mary Richmond said their intention was to return the brewery to its community and...