Nail Brewing's John Stallwood

The winners in the Perth Royal Beer Show were announced last Friday night with Swan Valley’s Feral Brewing winning best Australian Beer, WA beer and Ale.

Feral’s win continues its recent domination of major Australian beer awards, winning the trophy for best brewery at last year’s Australian International Beer Awards, the trophy for Champion Ale this year and a swag of medals in between.

Other winners included Nail Brewing’s Nail Stout which won a gold medal and trophy for best bottled stout. Nail’s win was the fifth time it has won awards for best Australian Stout in national awards and followed silver medals won the previous week at the International Beer Challenge in London.

Nail Brewing’s John Stallwood praised the quality of Australian beers.

“I am proud of Nail Brewing continuing winning awards but Feral Brewing continues to win the best of the best,” he said.

“I see Feral Brewing, Matilda Bay and Redoak Brewery as the best in the world. Australia in sport is known as underdog champions that never give up and in brewing we stand as strong.

“Our problem is excise kills small business microbreweries. The market is booming and more breweries start but success does not lead to growth.”

“Nail Stout won best beer in 2008 and best bottled stout last night but continues to struggle to survive largely due to excise,” John said.

“We complain about petrol prices being $1.30 but we pay over $1 litre on excise alone per litre of beer. Its wrong for you and me. We have the best breweries in the world and we cant grow.”

Stallwood highlighted his Imperial stout “Clout Stout” as an example of onerous excise.

“It won silver at the Perth Royal Beer Show and silver at the International Beer Challenge last week. The 10.6% imperial stout pays $3 excise for a 750ml bottle and $136 for a 50 litre keg.”

“It’s wrong, microbreweries help employment and tourism as a small business but either fail or struggle to grow with success.”

The Perth Royal Beer Show is part of Western Australian Beer Week, one of the premier events on the Australian beer calendar. The beer show includes categories for commercial and amateur brewers. A summary of results can be seen at Microbrewing.com.au, full results can be found here.