There has been a kaleidoscopic array of beers on offer this week in Sydney: sour and barrel-aged beers, traditional British-style real ales, and a brew featuring bacon and truffles that, against all reason, is rather delicious. Such adventurous quaffing is the result of Sydney Craft Beer week, enlivened by tap takeovers, degustations, meet the brewers sessions – even a beery high tea and an animal-themed onesies bike crawl around Newtown.

And it’s not just Sydney. Western Australia and Hobart are preparing for beer weeks next month, Newcastle’s celebration of the drink returns in February, Brewsvegas debuts in Brisbane in March and Good Beer week is back for a fourth time in Melbourne in May (Full disclosure: I’m a director of the festival.) So here’s a selection of top Australian brews across a range of styles.

The beer scene in Brisbane has really come alive in the past couple of years, driven by a handful of passion-fuelled small bars, such as Archive, The Scratch, Bitter Suite, Kerbside and Tippler’s Tap, alongside a growing number of microbreweries, including Bacchus, Green Beacon and Fortitude.

Predating them all is Burleigh Brewing, founded by Hawaiian brewer Brennan Fielding and his Australian wife Peta. Their beers regularly pick up major awards, with the HEF perhaps the most surprising of them all.

It’s a take on the Bavarian hefeweizen (wheat beer) style – think cloudy and awash with banana and clove aromas. And it’s a style that the Germans didn’t just invent, but have perfected. So when a brewery from the Gold Coast took gold in this category at last year’s World Beer Cup in the United States – the biggest beer awards of them all – there were more than a few raised eyebrows.

Manly microbrewery 4 Pines is one of the great success stories of Australia’s beer renaissance. Having established a reputation as a brewer of quality beers at its brewpub venue overlooking the Manly ferry, its owners invested in an offsite production facility that dwarves most local micros.

The transition has been seamless, with the beers losing nothing in the translation from 500 litre to 5,000 litre system and the original brewhouse still used to create all manner of small batch releases. They’ve not lost any of their joie de vivre either; at last weekend’s Australian Hotel Beer festival, owner Jaron Mitchell spent the entire time dressed as Batman, complete with growl, cavorting with drinkers.

The ESB is the latest beer to be added to their permanent range – a rich, multilayered, malty treat that smells and tastes like a quality English boozer.

We’re starting to see more Australian brewed saisons – with a growing number of Belgian inspired sour beers also in the pipeline. It’s a style of beer ideally suited to the Australian climate – light and zesty, yet frequently possessing fruity, spicy, herbal, even tart characteristics – approachable for newcomers, yet with enough interest for seasoned craft beer drinkers. Bridge Road’s was one of the very first and remains one of the best found in champagne style 750ml bottles in beer bars and restaurants; it’s a wonderful food beer.

Lager is often viewed as a dirty word in the craft beer world; associated with homogenised offerings from the brewing behemoths. But there are other reasons that most small breweries don’t brew them. For a start, traditional lagers and pilsners are such refined beers that there is nowhere to hide – that’s why people hold the lager brewers of Germany in such high esteem. But to brew one properly requires an extended period of conditioning; roughly six weeks to an ale’s two or less.

Tasmania’s Moo, part of the David Walsh empire that includes MONA and Moorilla Estate wines, has been brewing their pilsner for years. It’s as crisp as you could wish, with spicy aromatics and a refreshing, bitter finish.

A stout when it’s getting warm? Why not – this beer from Coopers, the South Australian family brewery that was making craft beers before the term was even coined, is a cracker.

Perhaps best known for their ubiquitous Pale Ale and English-inspired Sparkling Ale, this is my favourite from the Cooper’s range. There’s nothing flash or trendy about it, just an immaculate, traditionally brewed, higher alcohol stout; a reminder that, for all the cool stuff going on in the beer world today, you can always learn from the past.

It was only three years ago that a Melbourne pub, the Great Northern Hotel, first secured a few kegs of beer from WA’s Feral Brewing. The brewery kept winning trophies at the Australian International Beer Awards year in, year out, yet its head brewer refused to send beer east until he could guarantee refrigerated transport.

Now the trophies keep on coming and, thankfully for the discerning drinkers of Australia outside WA, so does the beer. The entire range, from wild-fermented sours to high-alcohol Imperial Stout, is worth sampling. But the highly hopped, impeccably balanced Hop Hog is the jewel in Feral’s crown, as near to the perfect beer as you will find.