Oceania's top 3 beer towns

International travel authority Lonely Planet has worked with a worldwide network of beer-loving travel writers (and well-travelled beer journalists) to select great taprooms and bars in the finest breweries that thirsty travellers can visit in more than 30 countries across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania.

Melbourne, Perth and Wellington were named as Oceania’s top three beer towns in Lonely Planet’s Global Beer Tour.

• Melbourne: “It shouldn’t be a surprise that Melbourne excels at brewing, selling and drinking craft beer. It’s clearly Australia’s ale capital, with breweries ranging from the mainstream (Mountain Goat) to the obscure but brilliant (La Sirène) and a ton of great indie beer bars in such neighbourhoods as Brunswick and Fitzroy.”
• Perth: “Home to some of Australia’s first craft brewers, Matilda Bay and Little Creatures, and one of its most lauded, Feral Brewing in the northeast, Perth thoroughly deserves its place here.”
• Wellington: “It might be wet and windy for much of the year in Wellington but there are always sunny fruit flavours in a pint glass to banish the blues with New Zealand’s distinctively tropical take on pale ale and IPA. Wellington has an extremely strong array of breweries and craft beer bars, making it a compact and cool city to tour.”

Australia is also represented in the book by breweries in Beechworth, Berriedale, Bobs Farm, Bright, Hobart, Margaret River, McLaren Vale, Swan Valley, Sydney and Woodend; while Auckland, Blenheim, Dunedin and Hamilton join Wellington in the book’s New Zealand selections.

Within each of the 30-plus countries in the book, Lonely Planet has organised the best breweries to visit by city. In the entry for each brewery, authors have suggested the must-try beer, and also recommended local sights so ‘beer tourers’ can explore the local area, as well as the beer.