If you’ve ever had the misfortune to pass through London’s Heathrow airport, you’ll have experienced the grim-faced passport control officials. Without a word, they grab your passport, look at the photo, glare at your face, hand back the document and wave you silently on your way.
Australia lives up to its image. Everyone is “mate” because it’s a matey kind of place. As someone originally from London’s East End, where “mate” is also common currency, I felt immediately at home Down Under.
What a difference at Melbourne airport. “G’day, Roger, what brings you to Australia?” the beaming official at the passport desk asks. “A beer festival? Jeez, mate, I’ll see you there!”
David Golding of Red Hill Brewing in the Victoria wine country in his spic and span brewery. (courtesy of Red Hill Brewing)
Australia lives up to its image. Everyone is “mate” because it’s a matey kind of place. As someone originally from London’s East End, where “mate” is also common currency, I felt immediately at home Down Under.
There’s a second, potent reason for feeling at home there: it’s a great beer drinking country. Only the Czechs out-drink the Aussies and in Australia the beer scene is changing rather more dramatically than it is in the Czech Republic. If Foster’s is your favorite tipple, don’t bother to go. What was once considered an iconic Australian beer―the “amber nectar”―is hardly featured prominently in the scene. In a week in Melbourne and Adelaide, I don’t recall seeing a single tap for Foster’s.
Even Crocodile Dundee shuns it now and the company that makes it has reverted to its original name of Carlton and Union Breweries. CUB’s main brands are Victoria Bitter, the biggest-selling beer in Australia―and a lager in spite of the name―and Carlton Draught.
With Lion Nathan (owned by Kirin of Japan), which brews Castlemaine XXXX, Toohey’s and Swan, the two giants command 95 percent of the Australian market. Cooper’s of Adelaide, doughty brewers of Sparkling Ale (see sidebar), has a further three percent, which doesn’t leave much room for anyone else. But an astonishing number of small craft breweries have sprung up to grab the remaining two percent of the market.
The craft brewers were on show at Beer Expo in Melbourne in the spring―autumn in Australia. It was the brainchild of David Lipman, publisher of Beer & Brewer Magazine, a glossy publication dedicated to all things beery in Australia and New Zealand. Thanks to the efforts of craft brewers and writers, Australians can now move beyond bland lagers and savor pale ales, an abundance of IPAs, porters and stouts, alongside Belgian and German-inspired wheat beers, golden ales and true pilsners.
