By Andy Young, editor TheShout
Running from Saturday 17 to Sunday 25 October there will be over 130 Sydney Craft Beer Week (SCBW) events held in over 70 bars, restaurants, breweries and outdoor spaces across the city.
This year’s SCBW will also spread beyond the harbour city, with events across the rest of Australia.
Speaking at the program launch at the Royal Albert Hotel, SCBW director Joel Connolly said: “We’ve got this great thing going on this year with interstate venues. We think that beer in NSW is incredible, some of the best in Australia, so what we’ve done is partnered with individual venues in every single state. What we will be doing is shipping down the best beers made specifically for the festival to those venues.
“So if you can’t get to Sydney then you can still go to somewhere in Canberra, or Darwin; South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria of course, you can go everywhere. So we are really excited about that.”
Since launching four years ago SCBW has grown year and year and Connolly pointed out that brewers and participants are starting to value quality over quantity in terms of the events on offer.
“One if the things that has changed over the years is that the quality of events is getting higher,” Connolly said. “Venues and brewers are doing fewer events and they are choosing to do the events they do do, really well. We have ‘Brewers’ Olympics’ this year, where you will see guys doing keg rolling and things like that and there is an axe throwing event.”
This year’s SCBW will also feature overseas brewers, with Connolly adding: “We’ve got some international guys coming out this year; we’ve got Garage Project from New Zealand, but really exciting is that Stone Brewing are coming out from the US.
“If you don’t know them, they are one of the godfathers of craft brewing in the United States. The US is responsible for this whole renaissance of craft beer that we are all experiencing now. So to have them coming out and serving beers is really exciting.”
The festivities for SCBW begin at the Opening Gala Night on Friday 16 October and full details of the program are available on the Sydney Craft beer Week website.