Praise beer – Good Beer Week is back again. From May 20 to 27, Melbourne’s pubs, bars, restaurants and breweries will come alive to celebrate lagers, pale ales, stouts, sours and everything in between. As ever, there’ll be food and beer pairings, one-night-only collabs and a chance to get up close with some of Victoria’s top brewers. Here are our picks for the week.

Creation Story Feast at Stomping Ground
With her restaurant Mabu Mabu Big Esso, chef Nornie Bero brings Australia’s native ingredients to a wider public, but it doesn’t end with food. For this special event at Stomping Ground, Bero will present a unique selection of beer-matched dishes drawing on the ingredients of her Torres Strait home of Mer Island, with the menu inspired by a creation story. The interactive feast will be backed by performance and storytelling, with Bero collaborating with Stomping Ground for a beer brewed with native produce. Not to be missed.

Tuesday 23 May
$115

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Abbey Collaby XIII at Moon Dog OG
From the red brick fortress of CUB to the backstreet warehouse bars of Moon Dog and Mountain Goat, Abbotsford has long been Melbourne’s brewing heartland. For this year’s Abbey Collaby event, those three bars are joined by rowdy upstarts Bodriggy to brew a limited-edition beer and raise funds for Collingwood Children’s Farm. The beer style is still under wraps (it was a hazy oat IPA in 2022) but the launch party will be a rootin’-tootin’ hootenanny with country tunes and a mechanical bull.

Wednesday 24 May
Free

Getting (Cheese) Trolley-ed at Boatrocker
Wine and cheese isn’t all that. The spectrum of flavours that malt, hops and yeast bring to beer make it the superior pairing with cheese – at least according to the Boatrocker crew. Head brewer Kirsten Lubitz and chef Rob Kabboord (formerly of Northcote’s cheese-obsessed diner Merricote and neo-bistro Lekker) have teamed up to pair six beers with six cheeses that’ll run the spectrum from breezy and light to the sort of funk that only barrel-aged beer can match.

Wednesday 24 May
$75

Beef, Beer and Barley at Victoria by Farmer’s Daughters
Farmer’s Daughters is chef Alejandro Saravia’s love letter to Gippsland produce and his second restaurant – Victoria at Fed Square – continues the theme. Here, the kitchen team is being joined by Traralgon’s modern and eclectic Good Land Beer for an exploration of beef and brews, including IPAs, sours and barrel-aged beers. The beef comes from Bonnie Brae Farm in the Gippsland town of Flynn, with cattle fed Good Land’s spent grain. It’s a beautiful cycle, being realised in dishes like beef tartare, a mixed grill selection and even a beef-fat fudge for dessert.

Wednesday 24 May
$100

Battle of the Bars, Brewers and Bottle Shops at The Keys
Ask anyone in the hospitality industry what they’re doing during Good Beer Week and the answer is probably “working”. This year, though, there’s something just for the breweries, bars and bottle shops as 12 teams take to the lanes of Preston’s The Keys to bowl off for the inaugural Hospitality Cup. For the rest of us, there’ll be a mechanical bull, The Keys’ upscale bowling alley menu and the chance to cheer as our favourite beer industry types knock down some pins.

Monday 22 May
Free

The Great Deeds Bake-Off at Deeds Taproom
It’s just like everyone’s favourite baking competition, only with more beer and less Paul Hollywood. To enter, just bake something using a Deeds Brewing beer, tag the brewery on Instagram and start campaigning for votes. If the public ranks your sweet treat in the top six, you’ll be up on stage, playing off for the chance to reverse engineer that dessert into a Deeds beer. If you’d rather just clap along from the crowd, Deeds chef Roger van den Bogaert will be baking miniature versions of the finalists’ recipes to share on the night. Bonus, the Deeds team is sending a six-pack of beer to every contestant who enters.

Tuesday 23 May
$39

Brewers and Chewers: Champions Edition at The Local Taphouse
Brewers and Chewers is a little like speed dating if romance was substituted for beer. As ever, The Local Taphouse has put together a line-up of brewers keen to chew your ear off while you sample their beers and work through a one-off menu. This year it’s all about Australian International Beer Awards (AIBA) and indie champs like local heroes Hop Nation, Stomping Ground and Boatrocker, plus Blackman’s Brewery in Torquay, Valhalla Brewing in Geelong and the Sunshine Coast’s Moffat Beach Brewing Co, who’ll spend some time at each table before rotating around, making this event one of the best chances you’ll get to ask all those beer questions you’ve been curious about.

Wednesday 24 May
$99

Hair of the Dog Breakfast at Beer Deluxe
Awards ceremonies are typically raucous and that’s doubly true when brewers are involved. The annual Hair of the Dog Breakfast – one of the longest-running Good Beer Week events – comes the morning after the AIBA ceremony. With the afterparty often wrapping up just a few hours before this event starts, you can bet there’ll be a few sore heads. Rock up for a matched beer-and-breakfast menu while you rub shoulders with Australian Venue Co head chef Telina Menzies, Coolroom Podcast’s Davydd Griffiths and sleep-deprived AIBA champion brewers.

Friday 26 May
$85

Good Beer Week runs from May 20 to 27.

goodbeerweek.com.au