The ‘Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular’ (GABS) was co-founded in 2011 by Steve Jaffares and Guy Greenstone, the pair also behind The Local Taphouse beer temples and Stomping Ground Brewery & Beer Hall.
The simple idea of inviting Australia’s most exciting craft breweries to brew and release a brand new beer at one mass event has grown to become an annual highlight on the industry’s calendar.
Today, the festival celebrates the largest number of craft breweries and cider makers in Australasia, along with food and entertainment, as the ‘GABS Beer, Cider & Food Fest’.
With more variety and innovation than ever before, the 2017 edition of GABS is already boasting a list of 170 unique, one-off ‘Festival Beers & Ciders’.
Jeffares and Greenstone shared their top 10 picks to look out for this year (listed in alphabetical order).
1) Bangh Thandi
Brewey: Garage Project
Key Ingredients: Almonds, fennel, Magaz Tari seeds, rose petal, pepper, cardamon, saffron, lactose and organic hemp oil grown in the Hawkes Bay of New Zealand.
Brewing process: Hemp Seed oil is added to the mash. The beer is brewed with lactose for the milky sweetness and infused with almonds, spices and saffron. The beer is then nitrogenated to give it an extra creamy mouth feel.
Brewer’s Note: “Rich, smooth, spiced strong milk stout inspired by the Holi beverage, Bhang Thandi.”
2) Bone & Marrow
Brewery: Aether
Key Ingredients: Double smoked bone marrow with a double Irish red recipe.
Brewing process: A mixture of in-house double smoked bone marrow and whole marrow bones is used to extract all the great flavour and texture of bone marrow without any of the off flavours that come with pushing bones in liquid above 80 degrees.
Brewer’s Note: “A double Irish red with double smoked bone marrow for double the enjoyment. Big, malt laden with dried fruit characters leading the way for a luscious, velvet mouth feel fading into a savoury, smoky finish. Big. Rich. Decadent.”
3) Fruit Tingle
Brewery: Merchant Brewing Company
Key Ingredients: Special tea blend, dried butterfly pea flowers, raspberries, orange, mandarin, lemon zest and lactose.
Brewing process: This beer is a kettle sour with lactobacillus. A tea blend and fruit is added to fermentation, and lactose added post souring process to add some sweetness to final product. The name refers to an actual fruit tingle cocktail, with elements of tartness (from fruit) and sweetness (from sugar present from blue curacao and lemonade).
Brewer’s Note: “The Fruit Tingle: the cocktail we love to hate and blamed all those messy nights on has been recreated as a beer. Purple in colour from a special tea blend; the tart, boozy beer is overloaded with fruit to create tasty flavours of citrus and raspberry, complemented with a fruity dry hop and a small amount of lactose to give hints of sweetness. A dry hopped, flower and fruit infused, lactose, kettle sour.”
4) Hidden in Plain Sight
Brewery: 4 Pines
Key Ingredients: Tetrahop, hop oil, isinglass finings, distilled roast essence.
Brewing process: This beer is triple-filtered, including carbon filtration that creates a very different flavour to what the colour would suggest.
Brewer’s Note: “Combining all the dark arts of brewing history, this beer is the “anticraft”. We made a beer so pale that it glows in the moonlight. Triple filtered including a carbon filtration step to ensure it is as clear as melted snow. We have thrown everything in the book at this one. Tetrahop, PGA, isinglass finings, hop oil and distilled roast essence for a perfectly clear beer that remains hoppy and tastes like a stout. Your senses will be turned upside down with crystal clear ‘black magic.’”
5) Irish Coffee Carbomb
Brewery: Tallboy & Moose
Key Ingredients: The key ingredient is whisky barrel aged coffee. A unique product based on a very unique and unusual process of ageing green (unroasted) coffee beans in a whisky barrel prior to roasting them.
Brewing Process: The beans are roasted to a level that compliments the barrel character, before being blended into the beer through a meticulous brewing process.
Brewer’s Note: “What to do with whisky barrel aged coffee?!? Make beer with it! We’ve taken porous green coffee beans, aged them gently in a Starward whisky barrel, roasted them at Red Bean Coffee Roasters around the corner from our Preston brewery, and blended the resulting coffee into an Irish red ale. The finished product is a complex blend of three friendly beverages that belong together!”
6) Kina Stout
Brewery: Piha Beer
Key Ingredients: This seafood stout incorporates Kina, the New Zealand Sea Urchin, sourced from Piha on Auckland’s West Coast where the test brewery is located. Kina is a traditional Maori food and has been eaten here since Pre-European times.
Brewer’s Note: “Piha embodies the wild, West Coast of New Zealand and we wanted to bring some of that wild coastline into our beer. To that end we grabbed some traditional kiwi kai, the New Zealand Sea Urchin to throw in our Kina Stout. With a unique silky, salty punch, our Kina Stout is packed with flavour and history.”
7) Purple Rain
Brewery: Choice Bros
Key Ingredients: Clitoria Ternatea flowers, also known as Butterfly Pea Tea.
Brewing Process: The flowers are steeped at the end of the boil to extract the vibrant purple colour that the beer takes on. The colour changes depending on the acidity.
Brewer’s Note: “A hoppy Purple Ale using Butterfly Pea Flowers, Citra, Wakatu and Eureka Hop Oil.”
8) Quetzalacatenango
Brewery: Mountain Goat
Key Ingredients: Queensland grown Carolina Reaper and Ghost Chilies.
Brewing Process: Extra protection worn when handling chilli paste.
Brewer’s Note: “Our brewer Kenny lived in Central America and spent time deep in the jungle in a Guatemalan insane asylum cultivating “the merciless peppers of Quetzalacatenango”. It’s also where he got his inspiration for our 2017 GABS Festival Beer. American ale and wheat malts provide just enough body to support an intense hop bill full of tropical fruit and citrus character, with the special blend of chillies making their presence known throughout. This beer is possibly the hottest in the world, and is a nod to Kenny’s time dancing with the space coyote.”
9) The Smoking Jacket
Brewery: 2 Brothers
Key Ingredients: Cuban tobacco, cognac, oak.
Brewing process: This beer is aged on tobacco and oak.
Brewer’s Note: “Brew 1000 – smooth, sultry and a little bit intoxicating. Steeped in hand cut Cuban tobacco, infused with Cognac and aged on oak. This velvet stout is low on roast character and silky on the palate.”
10) Who Poured the Porter in the Cookie Jar?
Brewery: Pact Beer
Key Ingredients: Melbourne’s Buttering Cookie Sandwiches’ salted caramel flavoured butterbings in a classic chocolate porter.
Brewer’s Note: “All the experts say not to put dairy into your beer. Crushed up cookies? No way. They’re probably right, but this is GABS, and we’re Pact. This year Pact has teamed up with Melbourne’s Butterbing Cookie Sandwiches to make the ultimate salted caramel porter. Using kilos of actual Butterbings in the boil, we’ve crafted a fantastic liquid dessert that’s good enough to drink! Receive a free Butterbing cookie sandwich with your full glass of beer at selected sessions!”
For more information on this year’s GABS and for the full list of ‘Festival Beers & Ciders’, visit www.gabsfestival.com.
