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May 17th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda A West Australian microbrewery has the hops on its rivals, with judges naming it the country’s best large brewery at the Australian International Beer Awards.
In a double toast for the Feral Brewing Company, its Hop Hog beer also claimed the best international pale ale prize for the fourth consecutive year at the 20th annual awards in Melbourne on Thursday.
A 52-member international judging panel sampled more than 1300 frothy offerings from craft brewers in Australia and countries including Lithuania, Puerto Rico, South Korea and the USA.
Feral’s co-owner Brendan Varis said he launched his Swan Valley-based brewery in 2002 with a vision to craft beers that, true to their company’s name, were a little on the wild side.
From the fruity Karma Citra to the bitter Fantapants, its brews are anything but subtle.
“They weren’t going to be like the big domestic breweries; our beer was going to be undomesticated,” Mr Varis told AAP.
A decade on, Feral’s growth is fermenting fast, with the company opening a new brewery that will see its annual production grow from half a million litres to about five million.
Australian microbrewing is 15 years behind the US, Mr Varis says, where a plethora of craft beers make up about six and a half per cent of the national market.
With a market share of just two per cent here, the industry has enormous potential for growth, and Aussie beer aficionados are increasingly catching on, he says.
“The pace at which people have been accepting craft beer in the last two years has been shocking. It’s like it’s reached that tipping point now and it’s really on the way. It’s an exciting time to be in craft brewing,” he said.
When asked why, he says the preference for craft beers over their mainstream rivals is mirroring a modern move towards specialised coffee over freeze-dried blends.
“To my mind, it’s just a flavour thing,” he said.
Mr Varis welcomes the $10 million tax breaks for microbrewers unveiled in the federal budget as “a great start”, but says they won’t make a significant impact on his business given it pays around $15,000 a week.
The awards are a thrill, he says, and give winning brewers leverage when they approach licensed venues across the country in a bid to get their beers on tap.
“It at least lets us have a conversation, whereas otherwise, (venues) wouldn’t even give us the time of day,” he said.
Other winners on Thursday night included the ACT’s Wig Pen Brewery Tavern, named the best small Australian brewery, and Matilda Bay’s Redback Pale, which was awarded best wheat beer.
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