New Zealand breweries are celebrating massive success at the Australian International Beer Awards in Melbourne last week with an incredible clean sweep of the champion international brewery crowns by NZ breweries. And what’s crazy is the three champion breweries were the same three that took out their respective titles at the New Zealand Beer Awards last year!
They were:
Champion Large International Brewery: Garage Project
Champion Medium International Brewery: Behemoth
Champion Small International Brewery: Three Sisters

This is phenomenal performance as the AIBAs draw huge overseas entries, with nearly 3000 entries from 21 countries.
Intriguingly Garage Project, Behemoth and Three Sisters basically dominated in three different style categories.
Garage Project won four golds for sour style beers including Chance Luck & Magic 2021, Carllion (Oud Bruin), Pickle Beer and White Mischief. Curiously Chance Luck & Magic 2021 got a gold medal while the 2020 version won silver. This flips the story on these two beers after the 2020 version won a trophy at the New Zealand Beer Awards, while the 2021 won gold. And the 2020 won a silver medal at the World Beer Cup just a couple of weeks ago.
Behemoth’s four golds came in their wheelhouse of hazy / hoppy with top honours to Sunny Nelson Sauvin, Brain Smiles, HopHopopotamus, and Chase The Sun.
Three Sisters meanwhile had golds for three darker, maltier beers — Tmave Pivo (dark lager), Rumours In The Dark (Munchner Dunkel, which is also in the New World Top 30), I Am Not Well (Barleywine). They added another for Wayward Son, their fresh hop beer.
Other gold medals went to Shining Peak (Gung Ho! Vintage Stout), Sunshine (Imperial Brown Ale, Grand Cru), Mount Brewing (Mermaid’s Mirth), Sprig & Fern (Best Bitter), Bach Brewing (Sticky Buds), Alibi (Bad Juju), Deep Creek (Aloha, Dear Rabbit).
It’s quite hard work piling through all the results, so apologies if I missed anyone. There were heaps of other bronze and silver medals to Duncan’s, Parrotdog, Waitoa, Burkes, Brew Moon, Cassels and Puhoi.
Results are all here.