If Victoria’s beer of choice is VB and Queensland’s is XXXX, then surely a craft beer will be a contender to become South Australia’s favourite beer. Craft beer is becoming vastly popular within Adelaide‘s bar culture, so much so that The Highway Hotel will soon be holding their first beer tasting festival with twenty breweries putting their precious lager out for the local beer enthusiasts arguing over which one’s the best.
Though South Australia’s regional areas have always been known as wine country, The Highway Hotel’s General Manager Simon Adami has set out to get craft beers the respect they deserve. Sick of the narrow perception he feels beer is unfair, he hopes the festival will raise awareness of the breweries and their products that are only really being sold at bottle shops. Though it’s been a long trek with the breweries initially being reluctant to participate in a beer tasting festival for the past year, Mr Adami will persist in making this an annual event for Adelaide’s beer culture to embrace the unknown rather than bigger beer brands most people stick to. Indeed, rather than simply buying a case of VB or Carlton Draught from a Thirsty Camel to take home, craft beers will get people out of the house and into the home of beer, the pub.
Something that is mostly unheard of in Australia, having a beer tasting festival, like all the more esteemed wine festivals of the world, will get all the beer aficionados together to debate about which brew has the best ingredients, aromas and tastes of all these lagers on offer. For a country that boasts to the world about what big beer drinkers we are, the evidence indicates South Australia is the beer state (cue “The Beer State” appearing on South Australia’s license plates). Craft beer was very slow in taking off in the east coast where all the action supposedly happens, but had instant success in Adelaide.
With 150 lines of craft beer on The Highway Hotel’s shelves, the festival takes place on Saturday March 16 and Sunday March 17, with plenty of live bands to keep patrons entertained while drinking a frothy one they haven’t tried before. Tickets are only $30 and are available by calling 8297 8155.
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