If you’re passionate about beer and love to share your enthusiasm by writing about it, you now have an exciting chance to see your article published in a new book and get paid as well.

Scribal Publishing, publishers of last year’s Beer Lover’s Guide to Australia and the recent Critic’s Choice: Australia’s best beers, are preparing to release the updated 2011 version of the Beer Lover’s Guide and are running a competition to find Australia’s best amateur beer writer to write an article for the book.

With the growth of breweries across Australia, this year’s Beer Lover’s Guide looks even more closely at beer travel and aspiring beer writers are being encouraged to submit a story about beer and travel.

Australian-based writers are invited to submit a 1000 word story about an Australian beer journey. There is wide latitude given in what the story can be about. It can be a descriptive feature about a beer trail, about an entire beer region, or it can be about a personal beer journey. It can be story about a figurative beer journey of discovery or even just a trip to the pub. Writers can tackle the topic from any angle; it just needs to be about beer in Australia with travel as a central theme.

The winning entry will be published in the Beer Lover’s Guide and the writer will receive a cash prize of $500. Runners-up will win a pair of Spiegelau Beer Classics glasses and have their articles published here on Australian Brews News.

Publisher Tilo Grieco said the competition fitted in perfectly with the aims of the book.

“We want to take beer lovers on a journey, the aim of the Beer Lover’s guide is to introduce Australian beer lovers to Australia’s growing beer regions, as well as to introduce them to new beer styles and flavours,” he said.

“This competition will let us introduce new writing talent as well and new perspectives about beer in Australia,” he said.

Australian Brews News editor, Matt Kirkegaard, who is chairing the judging panel, applauded the idea of the competition.

“There are very few outlets for aspiring beer writers to get themselves published in Australia,” he said.

“Just as there is a growing band of brewers in Australia creating a renewed interest in a wide variety of beer styles, there is a growing band of beer writers writing about them. This needs to be encouraged.”

“If you look at the growth of wine in Australia, it has been accompanied – and in many cases driven – by the contingent of wine writers who share their passion for wine, educate the market, identify and interpret trends and generally fire the imagination of the public about wine.

“For beer to continue its growth, the industry needs not just more brewers but also more beer writers. Competitions such as this are an excellent way to identify new talent and for them to get published.

“I congratulate the Beer Lover’s Guide for taking that chance and investing in Australia’s beer writers and the industry.”

The competition is open from today and entries close at 5pm on 3 June 2011. Details and terms of entry can be obtained here.

For further information and queries, contact the Editor.

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