In a craft beer world where breweries produce weird and wonderful styles in an attempt to be the latest cool kid on the block and appeal to the 5% of a total beer market which have developed advanced lupulin thresholds and short attention spans almost concurrently, the simple approach from Hawkers is making serious headway.
Hawkers began earlier this year, founded by Lebanese brewer Mazen Hajjar (961 Beer) and chef Joseph Abboud (Rumi, Moor’s Head) armed with some serious investment and high-tech equipment. It reflects Mazen’s optimism for better beer becoming a larger part of the mainstream, which is the lager dominated 95% of the beer market. But for that to happen, the beer needs to be accessible, it needs to avoid scaring potential converts away while still providing a different (dare I say it, “better”) experience than what the TV tells them they should drink.
While the best thing about craft beer is all the choice of styles and individual breweries’ take on them, for sustained growth in this country, I believe people like Mazen and the team at Hawkers are the future. Their beers don’t have weird names, they taste exactly how it should every time and it’s reasonably priced. They’re not fighting other tiny breweries for a slice of the 5% pie, they are trying to make the pie bigger. Simple.
Hawker’s National Sales Rep is well-known beer identity Mik Halse. I had a chance to catch up with Mik over a beer and talk about Hawkers, and their Pale Ale. I asked him what had been the public’s reaction to Hawkers. “Hawkers Beer and our pale ale, have been really well received, we launched at the Great Australian Beer Festival in February and won People’s Choice as best beer, so we started pretty well. Since then our Pale won medals at the AIBA’s and popped up on some of Victoria’s coolest beer taps, and made it to the shelves of some of the state’s best bottle shops.”
It’s easy to see why. This Pale Ale (an American Pale Ale) is very well made with a vibrant citrus and piney aroma that seems to have got a bit more out of the hops than most pale ales. There’s a slight malt backbone there which lets you order more than one pint of this beer. Delicious, just like their IPA, Pilsner and Saison.
Over the next few months, expect to see more Hawkers on taps around Victoria and for the beer nerds out there (bless ‘em) Hawkers will be releasing some seasonal beers and some cracking collaboration brews!
ABV: 5.2%
STYLE: American Pale Ale
SERVING TEMP: 4 degrees
ORIGIN: Reservoir, Melbourne
FOOD PAIRING: Thin crust pizza or gourmet burger
PRICE (RRP): $8 33oml, $69 carton
BUY IT HERE: www.hawkers.beer