About Brews News

Brews News

Overview

Brews News is an Australian online trade publication covering the business of beer. Published at brewsnews.com.au, it reports on the brewing industry as a trade subject rather than a consumer lifestyle one: brewery openings and closures, excise and alcohol policy, investment and consolidation, industry economics and the people running breweries large and small. Its own About page describes it as having grown into "the country's leading independent trade publication for the brewing sector", a characterisation the site applies to itself. The publication was founded and has always been operated by Queensland-based beer writer and journalist Matt Kirkegaard, and it remains independent, with no parent media group. Alongside the news site, Kirkegaard built Radio Brews News, a podcast operation whose interview archive runs to hundreds of episodes. In February 2024 Kirkegaard announced he was stepping back from active publishing, and the site was reframed as a permanent archive of the craft beer era. In practice, publishing has continued at a reduced volume since then: new items, including Kirkegaard's own reporting, appeared on the site through September 2026.

History

Brews News began as a WordPress blog that Kirkegaard launched in the early 2000s to write about the emerging Australian craft brewing movement. The publication itself dates the formal start of the venture to 2009, when it operated as Australian Brews News, while its About page says it has been "part of the fabric of the Australian brewing industry since 2010". Through the early 2010s it developed from a one-person blog into a staffed trade title. Six years after its founding, in 2015, Kirkegaard announced that James Atkinson, previously editor of drinks industry site The Shout, would join as editor, with Kirkegaard moving to the role of publisher while continuing to write columns and co-host the podcasts. The announcement recorded that Kirkegaard had been named the 2014 Australian Beer Writer of the Year, and its contributor ranks at the time included columnist and beer presenter Pete Mitcham, food and beer presenter Paul Mercurio, writer Sam Fletcher and beer historian Dr Brett Stubbs.

In 2021 Brews News launched the Australian Brewers Network, a data project mapping the career links between Australian brewers and the breweries they had worked at, which attracted backing from the team at Lion's Little Creatures brewery. On 2 February 2024, a story on the Brews News site announced that Kirkegaard was bringing the publication's active run to an end. Industry site Beer Reflections, reporting the announcement the same day, described a farewell episode of the flagship podcast (episode 451) in which Kirkegaard explained that the title's sustainability mirrored that of the small breweries it covered: it had never reached a scale at which he could step away without risking what it had become. The site's revised About page now records that "in early 2024, Matt stepped back from active publishing after nearly two decades", while noting that the archive remains online and continues to be updated.

Programming and Content

The site's reporting has always centred on the commercial and regulatory life of brewing. Its About page lists the territory it covered for nearly fifteen years: "brewery openings and closures to excise policy, investment, industry economics and the personalities shaping the sector". Excise taxation, a perennial pressure point for small brewers, was a signature issue, as were voluntary administrations and brewery sales during the market correction that followed the craft boom and the COVID period.

The current site is organised into news, news releases, features, a technical section called BreweryPro, and announcements. The features strand includes a history series by Dr Brett Stubbs, whose June 2026 instalment republished a 1986 account of Melbourne's first modern pub brewery. BreweryPro carries technical and operational material for working brewers, such as hop selection, beer flavour science and production costing. The announcements section covers new beer releases and adjacent drinks launches. Since the 2024 step-back, the mix has shifted toward industry-supplied media releases, which the site explicitly invites, interspersed with original reporting: in June 2026 Kirkegaard himself reported Lion's proposal to close the James Boag's Brewery in Launceston and the dismissal of a complaint against a classic VB advertisement's styling.

The podcast arm, Radio Brews News, produced two main programs: Beer is a Conversation, a weekly interview series with brewers, hop growers, marketers and other industry figures, and Brews News Week, a news round-up. The site describes Radio Brews News as Australia's longest-running beer podcast, a claim it makes for itself, and the interview archive extends to hundreds of episodes, with the flagship show reaching episode 451 by the time of the February 2024 announcement.

Audience and Reach

Brews News is written for people who work in and around brewing rather than for drinkers generally: brewers, brewery owners, suppliers, distributors and the wider drinks trade, alongside engaged followers of the industry. No audited audience figures for the title are published, and none are asserted here. In the 2015 editor announcement, Kirkegaard said the site had grown to be "one of the most highly trafficked beer sites in the country", a claim made by the publication about itself at that time. The strongest evidence of its reach is the depth of its archive and podcast catalogue, the industry figures who appeared on its programs, and the fact that mainstream and trade outlets treated its February 2024 wind-back as industry news in its own right. The site today promotes its newsletter with the line that it has had its finger "on the pulse of brewing for over 20 years", its own framing of its longevity.

Digital Presence

Brews News is a digital-only publication. Its website carries the full text archive back to its early years, the Radio Brews News podcast back catalogue, and a newsletter subscription offer for readers in the industry. The homepage continues to surface new material: the most recent items sighted were dated 10 September 2026 (an Agriculture Victoria call for expressions of interest for a Victorian craft beer industry reference group), following June 2026 news items on the closure of Brouhaha Brewery's original Maleny venue and Six String Brewing's appointment of administrators. Items are bylined to Kirkegaard, to contributors such as Dr Stubbs, or published as media releases, and the site distinguishes those categories in its presentation.

Ownership and Organisation

Brews News is an independent, founder-operated publication. It was created by Matt Kirkegaard, who has served as its editor, publisher and principal writer across its life, and it has never been part of a larger media group. James Atkinson held the editor's role from 2015, allowing Kirkegaard to step into the publisher position, and the title otherwise relied on a small group of contributors, including Pete Mitcham as columnist and podcast co-host, Dr Brett Stubbs as its beer historian, and, into early 2024, content contributor Jess Laven, whose bylines appear on features and technical articles from 2023 and January 2024. The operation has always been lean by design, a point Kirkegaard himself made when explaining the 2024 decision: its most consequential reporting often involved subjects that did not attract sponsorship.

One location point should be recorded openly. The inventory underlying this profile lists the publication in Melbourne, Victoria, but the publication's own About page describes Kirkegaard as a "Queensland-based beer writer and journalist", and the title's history is closely tied to Queensland brewing, including early coverage of the Maleny-based Brouhaha Brewery. No Melbourne office for Brews News is published on its site; the frontmatter of this profile follows the inventory, and the discrepancy is stated here rather than resolved silently.

Contact and Availability

Brews News publishes its contact route on its About page: media releases and industry announcements can be submitted to news@brewsnews.com.au. The site also offers a newsletter sign-up and carries its podcast archive and back catalogue of articles in full. No street address or telephone number for the publication is published on the pages reviewed, and none is printed here. The website remains live and updated, with new items posted as recently as September 2026.