Northern Craft Beer Festival

Sometimes one event leads to several others. This happened to us recently as we met a bartender on our first day in Melbourne who led us to both a taco restaurant and a craft beer festival...crazy! We purchased tickets to the Northern Craft Beer Festival online and found our way to the Pentridge Prison where it was located. Yes, it was located in the D block of an old prison. Kinda of a cool venue, but mostly creepy. 

Yes, it's a beer festival at a prison

The venue plays up the creepiness by retaining all the barbed wire and prison gates

There were around twenty different craft brewers and a few food stations lined up through the cell block and exercise yard. We're used to paying admission to beer festivals that gets you a set amount of tokens for drinks. That was not the case here. There were some free samples, but overall you were encouraged to purchase "stubbies" or "pots" of beer. We hadn't brought cash. Oops. Kinda awkward. But, we made the best of the free samples and enjoyed conversation with a few brewers. We were particularly interested in hop varieties, as Australia has access to some different hops than we're used to. 

 Craft brewers set up all along prison block D

Here's a few things we learned: 

• Stubby/stubbies = 375 ml short neck bottle of beer 
• Pot = 285 ml (10 fl oz) of beer  
• Galaxy = a popular hop from Tasmania that is very floral and fruity with a delicious smell
• Helga & Vic Secret = Other Australian hops
• Australia is fairly new to the craft beer scene...most of the brewers had been in business less than two years. 
• Many people in the craft brew scene seemed familiar with Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids, giving us a lot of street cred

Brandon with a sample of taco beer brewed with lime and coriander from Two Birds Brewery! 

Overall we learned that we should be very thankful for the relatively cheap and easy access we have to great beer in the States. If you'll permit us to be beer snobs for a moment...The beer we've had thus far in Australia has not nearly matched the quality and variety we've grown accustomed to living in the craft brew powerhouse of Michigan. But speaking to people at the festival it seems Australian brewers are definitely headed in the right direction.