Two Northern Tasmanian breweries have been invited to make creative brews, using unique ingredients, for a popular Melbourne beer festival. COREY MARTIN reports.
THERE is nothing normal about the Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular festival, known as GABS.
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The US Beer Connoisseur Magazine named the Melbourne and Sydney GABS festivals in the top 20 worldwide.
It features 120 one-off beers specifically made for the event and Tasmania's Morrison Brewery and Van Dieman Brewing are taking part this year with batches never sampled before.
The beers are all untried and more than 17,000 people are expect to stalk Melbourne's historic Royal Exhibition Building for a sample between May 22 and 24.
Brewers from Australia and New Zealand have used ingredients such as oysters, truffles, vodka, biscuits and split peas in their ales.
Van Dieman Brewing's Will Tatchell said the festival pushed the frontier of beer styles and methods that could pose a commercial risk.
"We know the public going to the festival are more than expecting some weird and wonderful beers, so it gives us an opportunity as brewers to push the perceptions of what a beer is," he said.
Former documentary filmmaker Steve Jeffares and actor Guy Greenstone started the festival in 2012 - they now run events in Melbourne and Sydney.
"Breweries can submit any beer they like as long as they've never brewed it before," Mr Jeffares said.
"Some choose to brew in a traditional style, perhaps with a twist, while others use exotic ingredients and brewing processes to come up with something very creative."
Boutique brewers are holding strong in the beer market, while mainstream beer sales continue to decline.
The latest Roy Morgan statistics show that the number of Australian adults consuming craft beer in an average four-week period, has increased to more than one million for the first time on record.
Mainstream beer intake dropped by almost 32 per cent in the same period.
One Night in a Black Tent will keep you talking
ONE Night in a Black Tent is not an ordinary name for a beer.
However, it is exactly what Van Dieman Brewing's Will Tatchell has named this year's brew for the GABS festival in Melbourne.
"The name was based loosely on an evening after Esk Beerfest," he said.
The White Hills brewer has created a 10.5 per cent alcohol black barley wine using Tasmanian black truffles, native pepper berries, fennel seeds and black molasses.
Mr Tatchell said the beer was aged in tokay port barrels for seven months, giving it a "rich, fruity, spicy with a velvety smooth roast texture".
"It is a stronger style of beer, more hops, more malt and more alcohol," he said.
"The native pepper berries add a spicy component and they complement the dark roasted malts nicely.
"The fennel seeds give it a slight aniseed licorice flavour and the black molasses to give it a sweetness to balance out the acidity of the dark malts.
"Once in the port barrels we shaved some black truffle in there and all those components are very subtle."
Mr Tatchell said the beer had the taste of dark plum, raisins, fruit cake, kola nut and roasted malt.
It is the fourth GABS release beer Van Dieman Brewing has created.
There were only 600 litres, 12 kegs, of One Night In A Black Tent made with five heading to the GABS festival and the remainder to be filtered out in Tasmania over winter.
"The term barley wine is an old term from 150 to 200 years ago when beers and ales were classed as 6 per cent or below.
"When it started to get into the alcohol per cent of wine, it became a barley wine," Mr Tatchell said.
"With the rise of craft beer they are becoming more popular."
Scorpion peppers put a sting in ale
PAUL Morrison has called upon one of the most pungent peppers in the world to include in his specialised brew.
The Trinidad Scorpion pepper was one ingredient that Invermay's Morrison Brewery used to produce its Smoked Chilli IPA for Melbourne's GABS festival.
"It's an American IPA, lots of hops, fairly tropical fruit and some beechwood-smoked malt as well, which gives it a bacon sort of note," Mr Morrison said.
"It works really well with the fruity hops and the Trinidad Scorpion chilli that is in there - they are one of the hottest chillies in the world.
"It's fairly balanced between all the components: nothing stands out, the chilli is not too in your face and you can drink a few pints of it with no worries."
Mr Morrison said there was no development done for the one-off batch, which would best complement pizza or barbecued meats.
Morrison Brewery has entered in the Melbourne GABS festival for the past three years.
"It gives you a chance to push the boundaries a bit and do anything," he said.
"The beers are pushing the extreme end."
Mr Morrison said his focus had turned to bottled beer heading into the winter rather than kegs, as people were starting to sit at home and drink.