GEORGIA MARR
The 2019 Crafted Beer and Cider Festival showcased more than 200 drinks and 40 breweries when it took over Kurrawa Park in Broadbeach on Saturday.
The festival, which had its debut in 2017, was offering a lot more than just drinks, although beer and cider was draw enough for true craft brew fans.
The 18 plus event also featured a full line-up of bands, DJs and other entertainment.
This year’s musical line-up included WHARVES, The Delta Riggs, Concrete Surfers, Seaside and many more.
One of the stand-out events from last year, beer yoga, made a welcome return, combining exercise, meditation, sport and beer to bring spectators a comedic spin on traditional yoga.
Crafted Beer and Cider Festival director Anna Cook said beer yoga was her favourite event of the day.
“My favourite is probably the beer yoga, we debuted it last year and we didn’t know how it would really go down, but it was fantastic,” Ms Cook said.
“It’s great and hilarious to watch – no yoga experience necessary,” she said.
“It’s really fun and it’s about being mindful in every sip that you take.”
There was even a ping pong competition that guests to the festival could take part in.
Ms Cook said this year’s festival was a relaxed space for friends to eat, drink and have a good time.
“It’s a really nice chilled atmosphere in the park so you can sit down with your friends, pull your picnic blankets out, have some good food,” Ms Cook said.
Anna Cook and her brother Sam Pearce came up with the idea for the festival, which is now in its third year.
The idea came to fruition in 2017, when the festival hosted 35 breweries and more than 150 beers and ciders.
Ms Cook said she and her brother both had experience in events as well as a shared passion for craft beer, which eventually lead them to create their dream festival.
“We both have an event background and both have a love for craft beer and local industry, so it kind of made sense for us to pair together and create an event right here on the Gold Coast,” she said.
“We just wanted to create a nice inviting festival experience that has music in it as well, so not just your exhibition style event.”
The Gold Coast craft beer industry is booming and with very little in the way of craft beer festivals on the Gold Coast, local breweries have fewer opportunities to showcase their product to consumers.
Ms Cook said a large part of creating a craft beer and cider festival on the Gold Coast was to help promote local industries and independent businesses.
“The Gold Coast is just booming for craft beer at the moment and especially in the last five years you can see all the new brewers that have popped up,” she said.
“So we just really wanted to showcase that on a bit of a national level, bring some other brewers in as well and just kind of have a bit of fun with it really.”
Stone and Wood Gold Coast sales representative Krista Hall said the Gold Coast needed to have more opportunities like the Crafted Beer and Cider Festival for local breweries to promote their businesses.
“You think about other cities like Brisbane, who have things like this all the time – sometimes once a month,” Ms Hall said.
“But for us on the Coast, we just need to have more of this stuff, but obviously we don’t have the population suit,” she said.
With big breweries such as Great Northern and VB still appealing to a large percentage of beer drinkers, Ms Hall said it was good to see beer fans getting to know the stories behind smaller independent breweries.
“It’s always good when you can tell stories that these businesses are independently owned and were community based and were poured locally, rather than the bigger breweries which are multinational and multi-million-dollar companies,” she said.
“So, it’s always good when you can tell those kinds of stories and get to know the community a little better.”
The festival’s central location at Kurrawa Park in the heart of Broadbeach creates the perfect opportunity for tourists and locals alike to try any of the 200 craft brews on offer at the festival.
This year, it wasn’t just craft brewers on show, with event sponsors and local distillery Granddad Jack’s providing spirits from a vintage style, two-storey pop-up bar.
Crafted Beer and Cider Festival 2019 introduced new products from the likes of repeat attendees Balter Brewing Company with their classic XPA and Pirate Life Brewing, along with Black Hops, Currumbin Valley Brewing and Lost Palms Brewing Co., who presented their recently launched Gold Coast Bitter Lager.
Lost Palms sales representative Zak Nalder said the Crafted Festival was the perfect opportunity for locals to explore new flavours and to better understand where their drinks were coming from.
“It’s a direct way for local Gold Coast businesses to engage with the local clientele that might not be overly exposed to craft beer, who might just have an interest in beer,” he said.
“They can head on down and try some stuff they may not normally try.”
“They can get it first-hand directly from the brewers themselves and have a chat with the guys who make it and sell it, rather than the guys who push it in the bottle shops and bars,” Mr Nalder said.
For more information on Crafted festival, head to www.craftedfestival.com.au.