Australia: Craft beer industry showing no sign of slowing

Australia's beer tastes have been gradually shifting towards craft beers produced by small breweries, and with the industry showing no sign of slowing, the beer landscape is undergoing significant change, ABC Local reported on January 7.

Wander into any big city pub or bottle-o and you will notice the range of beer is no longer a line-up of the usual suspects.

Sometimes, the craft beer range is bigger than mainstream varieties.

It is a sign Australia's beer tastes are changing, and just as consumers have become more aware of where their fresh produce comes from, so has their interest in the origins of their beer increased.

"There is a keen interest in supporting local businesses and small industries to see it grow so we have something interesting and viable in Australia, and not just keep drinking the same beers over and over," Wollongong craft beer brewer Phil O'Shea said.

"A lot of craft beers produced are only produced once, so seeking them out is a fun and interesting thing to do."

According to a survey by mobile payment app Clipp, craft beer is a juggernaut for people in their 20s and 30s, but is not as popular among older drinkers.

Their data found craft beer sales accounted for 45 per cent of beer sales in urban areas — a figure that did not surprise Mr O'Shea.

"I've been drinking craft beer for a fair while and my friends enjoy it as well. We get to Sydney and other areas and Wollongong has been a bright spot in the last year or two for craft beer and supporting local beers," he said.

The definition of craft beer is something that divides brewers, but Mr O'Shea believed it was more about philosophy than production size.

"If you want to keep refining and producing good quality beer, that's more of what craft is about," he said.

"It doesn't mean if you do 50,000 litres a year you can't be a craft brewer. It's more about the inspiration and the beer you produce."

Like many industries, Australia often follows the lead of bigger countries, and beer is no different.

The United States has seen an explosion in sales of craft beer in the past decade, and the United Kingdom is so full of microbreweries that many pubs will stock locally-brewed beer ahead of mainstream varieties.

"The craft beer market has a small foothold, but it's definitely growing and what we're seeing is more and more establishments are putting on craft beer," Mr O'Shea said.

"There's more demand from people, which will fuel growth in the industry, and we haven't seen a point where we've stagnated."

Mr O'Shea said brewers were in turn inspired to create different beers to service the curious market.

He is working on an Australia Day lamington beer, with hints of coconut and chocolate.

It is this sort of small-scale brewing that will forever separate craft brewing from mass-produced beers.

"People are more aware of where the product is coming from, and people come in asking about the raw ingredients and the process behind it," Mr O'Shea said.

"People are more interested in everything they put into their mouths, and beer is no different to locally-grown produce."

Just like wine, clothing and super foods, beer fashions come and go, and Mr O'Shea said 2016 was likely to continue some of the trends of 2015.

He said the popularity of Indian pale ales — known for its strong hops flavour — was set to continue.

"We'll also see a lot of breweries producing sour beers," Mr O'Shea said.

"These have light acidity and are nice and clean and tart, but they can be challenging to produce, so I don't think they'll have a huge amount of traction, but it will definitely be a popular style of beer."

08 January, 2016