The Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular

As part of Good Beer Week, the Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular (GABS) was recently held at the Royal Exhibition Building. 

The GABS festival showcased a diverse range of Australian craft beers and ciders in the Dan Murphy's Marketplace along with some of Melbourne's cafes and restaurants. 

Dan Murphy’s is a giant supporter of GABS (since its origin in 2011) and Gastrology were privileged to be invited along to check out the festivities. 

This year, we tasted ciders from Napoleone Brewery and Ciderhouse (in the Yarra Valley)  and Willie Smiths Organic Cider from Tasmania. Both cider tastings were refreshing and well balanced. However, the Willie Smith's Organic cider was our favorite cider of the day as it was light, refreshing and full of the lovely apple flavour. 

As for the food, we had some delicious fried chicken wings and the Cuban Sandwich from Meatmother. To finish off we went for a paddle of ice-cream made with beer from Billy Van Creamy. The paddle consisted of malt, stout, berliner weisse and peach sour ice-creams. The malt and stout ice-creams were heavenly. We loved the wonderfully subtle flavour of the ice creams. Each scoop was delightfully sweet and creamy. 

There was also a cooking demonstration at the Steel’s Food & Drink Experience featuring My Kitchen Rules' contestants Eve and Jason. 

Whilst the audience sampled a paddle of beers, they cooked their spicy jalapeno poppers and chocolate chilli cake which were definitely crowd pleasers.   

Written by Helena Lea.