Chris Shanahan: Craft beer positions itself with wine

Co-director of Melbourne’s three-day Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular (GABS), Steve Jeffares, says the event attracted around 12.000 visitors this year. Then in late November, Jeffares invited breweries to participate in GABS 2014 at the Royal Exhibition Building from 23 to 25.

From next year GABs becomes part of Good Beer Week – a Victoria wide celebration of beer, established in 2011. Good beer week claims to have doubled the number of events to over 100 in 2012. And in 2013, reports its website, “Many of Melbourne’s leading culinary lights took part, including the traditional, such as Grossi Florentino and Metteo’s, and the new wave, such as Cumulus Up, Rockwell and Son, Kumo Izakaya and Pope Joan”.

Dramatic, sustained growth in craft beer consumption seems to be steadily repositioning beer as an upmarket beverage deserving of the same attention being lavished on wine.