Bicheno has added another accolade, with a local brewery named equal best small brewery in the country.
The east coast town topped Australian Traveller’s 100 Best Towns list for 2026 and now Bicheno Brewing has earned national recognition of its own.
The brewery tied with Brisbane-based Slipstream Brewing for Champion Small Brewery at the inaugural Beer Championships in Melbourne, where its Launch Lager was also named Champion Australian Lager.
The awards come as the east coast business prepares to quadruple its production capacity.
Owner Liam Hooper said the result was “amazing”.
“We’re kind of still pinching ourselves, to be honest,” he told Pulse.
“It’s the sort of accolade you dream of really, because it tells you that the product you’re producing is bang on.”
“The lager rated as exquisite, which is effectively a flawless beer.”
Three of the brewery’s beers made the final six in their categories: the Launch Lager, the Juicy Pale and the Ti Ama Italian pilsner. The competition attracted 260 entries from 74 brewers in its first year.
Hooper said the main reason the brewery enters competitions is to get feedback from the judges which it then uses to improve its recipes.
The result is also “really good for us in the marketplace”, Hooper said, with the brewery about to expand its production facility.
He said the expansion was critical because the small microbrewery could not currently produce enough beer to meet orders.
Its team of three people is expected to double in the next 12 months.
Hooper, a career project manager who grew up in Hobart, said his love of craft beer was born during a stint in America.
“They just had an amazing range of craft beer that really excited me being a guy that grew up in Tasmania and it was either Boag’s or Cascade,” he said.
He bought the Farm Shed in Bicheno and set up the brewery in a space at the back that was previously the post office. The Farm Shed also offers tastings of local wines and Tasmanian spirits.
He said there was “so much amazing beer in Tasmania” and pointed to Hobart-based Shambles Brewery, which was named Champion Lower Alcohol for its Baggy Green session IPA at the same awards.
“It just reiterates that there’s such great quality beer being made in Tasmania and for visitors, they’ve, you know, they’ve got some awesome stuff to come and try,” Hooper said.
“A lot of which they can’t buy on the mainland due to the nature of the challenges of getting stuff out of the state and the cost prohibitive nature of that.”
