WITH the Australian National Homebrewers Conference successfully concluded, it won’t be long till our attention will switch to another great Canberra beer event; the Beer Day Out and Canberra Beer Week. As has been the case with the last few This Week In Beer… articles, this latest piece looks at some of the big players at this year’s big festival. However, instead of just looking at one brewery, this piece will look at several incredible breweries featured during Canberra’s big beer week.

From across the ditch, 8 Wired, Epic and Liberty Brewing will all be well represented at the Beer Day Out festival. 8 Wired comes from the Sauvignon Blanc soaked shores of the Marlbrough region. I’ve known of more than one person who has claimed 8 Wired is the only good tasting thing to come out of Marlbrough, but I’ll leave that for you people to decide.

8 Wired are known to go above and beyond the standard fare produced by many craft breweries. Their iStout is a massive, highly hopped and well awarded brew, whilst they have several other interesting beers, including a Chardonnay barrel aged Saison and the 90 IBU Super Conductor Double IPA. Definitely keep a close eye on 8 Wired at the Beer Day Out festival.

Hailing from Auckland in the north island are Epic and Liberty Breweries. Liberty Brewing are well known for their colourful beer labels and distinctly hoppy beers. Their aptly named Sauvignon Bomb is a delicious pale ale using New Zealand hops, known for their fruitiness and pungent, fresh aroma. Their neighbouring brother, Epic Brewing, is the other big craft beer player from Auckland.

Epic Brewing is a highly decorated and awarded brewery, winning several awards in New Zealand for their big tasting beers. Epic Brewing is known for doing everything to the extreme (epic-ly perhaps)! Big hops, big flavours and big aromas are the name of the game for this well-respected brewery.

So make sure, on your trip to the Beer Day Out that you don’t neglect the non-aussie breweries. The beers from across the ditch are big, bold and hoppy, which is well and truly three big ticks from me.

But if you don’t get the chance to make it to the 8 Wired, Epic or Liberty Brewery tents, fear not, as these three breweries are teaming up with the team at podfood in Pialligo for what they are dubbing as the Long Kiwi Lunch. 4 courses will be matched with 4 different and exciting beers from these 3 big and bold breweries. Once again, you can find out more information about this event and others by checking out the Canberra beer week website at www.canberrabeerweek.com.au.

This article was written by Adrian Moran.

[“KiwiEggRatio” by Shyamal – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.]