Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/131975
forefront Above: Hops put the bitterness into 'real craft' and commercial beers. 54 funded by $65-billion-dollar global conglomerates. There's just no comparison between those companies and the small, independent, familyowned craft breweries." Hollyoak has received much feedback from customers who are drinking beers they think are from small, local breweries but are really labels coming out of the same breweries as the mainstream beers. "Those beers are masquerading as something they're not," he says emphatically. "The definition of craft beer is an interesting one," says Ian Kingham from Dan Murphy's. "There are some people who believe that craft beer should be produced in small, litre batches stirred with a wooden paddle and use only specific ingredients and no automation." Small craft brewers don't see these as restrictions but as part of the labour of love of producing 'real craft' beer. "Then there are those at the other end of the spectrum who say craft beer is all about the type of beer that's produced," says Kingham. Those producers are less concerned about the methods of production – the 'craft'. They have no problem with brewing large batches and bottling and marketing the product as craft beer, because the product fits their definition of craft beer. James Squire, for example, is a range of craft beers produced in Sydney by Malt Shovel Brewery, which is owned by Lion Nathan, a company within the large Japanese conglomerate Kirin Holdings. Master brewer Chuck Hahn says, "From our point of view the word 'craft' should describe beers that challenge convention through innovation and originality and deliver flavour to the Australian beer drinker." Despite James Squire being brewed by the foreign company that also produces mainstream beers such as Tooheys, XXXX and Hahn, the people at Malt Shovel Brewery consider themselves just as capable and eligible to compete in the Australian craft beer market as microbrewers, based on their methods and products. "At Malt Shovel Brewery a handful of brewers have the freedom to operate as a smaller, independent brewery, but with the benefit of