AUNZ craft beer is an amazing industry. Full of creativity, guts, and characters. You’d be hard pressed to find a craft brewery that hasn’t done it really really tough over the last couple of years. Fires, floods, Covid-19, lockdowns, supply lines pinched, transport Additive Blue (Adblue) issues, smashing of the hospitality industry, redundancies, loss of casual visa-holding staff, and economic crunching. We’ve seen a lot in the past couple of years. Through it all though there has been an immense show of interindustry support and understanding. Breweries reaching out to each other to lend a hand. Staff reaching out to downsized colleges in other companies to check on how there doing. Customers mindfully coming out to support their locals to keep it going. We are so grateful for the support we have gotten through this tough period which was tough on us all; beer makers, beer drinkers, and the community as a whole. Through it all though we have continued to make outstanding beer. We all do our bit to spread the love ;)

Over the past 5 years the trend of what craft followers rave about has been Pale Ales and India Pale Ales, across AUNZ. While mainstream beer continues to be dominated by lagers, ales well and truly take the spotlight in craft. Why? Most people come to craft as counter culture, as a revolt against mainstream’s standard, homogenous, clean taste. Craft represents the opposite , with its fruity, tropical, morish Pale Ales and bitter, piney, fruity, mouth bombs of IPAs. Craft has exactly what mainstream has robbed us off, taste and choice. Craft offers the full spectrum of beer. Sure, it can be messy and quirky at times, a bit of hit and miss, but what craft always is is real and fresh and bold. We put ourselves on the line to bring new and exciting limiteds to market. We aren’t afraid to give new things a go. Passion, guts, and flair.

Having a look then at what people voted as their favourite beers in the GABS Top 100 Beers, AUNZ, it’s not surprising that Pale Ales and IPAs dominated. While we do have trends for other beers, those trends are currently more acutely seasonal, such as sours in summers, and porters in winter for example. The main thrust of craft is still hops, as it was in the beginning. When it comes to what we consume the most, as opposed what we vote the most outstanding, the trend is slightly different. What you take home a case of, or have on tap the most, is without doubt Pale Ales and Pale Lagers. While these plainer, more sessional beers, don’t always take home the voters prize, let’s face it they aren’t the most exciting, they are what we want when we catch up with friends or sit down to relax. Beer doesn’t always have to be complicated and mind blowing. Time and place for everything, and more often than not it’s just the taste of a good Pale that’s get you through.

Here are a few of graphs showing the GABS Top 100 trends over the past 5 years. The GABS top 100 are voted by craft lovers each year. Below I’ve graphed the result, grouped by style. To determine the popularity metrics, I summed up the points for each individual beer in that category in the Top 100. For each beer that was awarded “#1” I gave them 100 points, “#2” 99 points, “#3” 98 points, and so forth. The first graph shows both Australia and NZ GABS Top 100’s from 2016 to 2021. The second graph shows just Australia, and the third graph just New Zealand. The “Unknown” category is for beers entered as “Experimental” rather than being classed in a distinctive style by their brewer. Pale Lagers (of which Pilsner is one) is the dominated style in mainstream beer AUNZ, but as you can see below the craft pop contest is smashed by Pale Ales and India Pale Ales. In AU the Pale Ales have been the leader, but really there’s not much between them when compared to their lead on third place. In NZ the IPAs are well out in front and not looking back. You’ll notice a lot of style names on the bottom axis that are hard to even perceive a blip in pop score. As you can no doubt guess these just barely made it into the Top 100 over the past year, but mostly just once or twice, and they secured a place so far down the 100 scale that their pop score isn’t even registering on the below graphs. I’ve shown them still to demonstrate the breadth of styles breweries are producing.

What Us Crafties Are Doing Down Under (AUNZ 2022)