Author: James Smith, The Crafty Pint
Original Article published on 18th March 2026
Hawkers' Four Seasons series is back for another year, and with another local artist along for the ride. This time the person tasked with creating the designs for the four beers is Annie Walter, who chose to feature one of her favourite birds, the Spotted Pardalote, on the autumn release. They're tiny birds native to the south and east of Australia, but that's pretty much the only thing that's tiny about the beer.
You might expect brewers to opt for a fairly subtle base beer when showcasing freshly-picked wet hops, but that's not been the route chosen by Hawkers – not in the slightest. Instead, this showcase of Melba hops from Ellerslie is a 9 percent ABV double West Coast, with a few other hop varieties forming part of the base liquid before heaps of Melba was added.
The result is a beer that's big in body, big on sweet, sticky, citrusy fruitiness, and big when it comes to boozy impact too.
