Okay Good Beer Week, which has been running in Melbourne since last Friday ends this weekend with GABS or the Great Australisian Beer SpecTAPular, which is a huge beer festival that runs over three days and nights at the Royal Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne. There are about 5,000 people a session and 5 sessions. There are 136 (ish) one off festival beers, plus a whole heaps of others served from the brewery stands.
I'm going to write a GABS post later this week (as I'm going again tonight) but let me tell you on the some of the better beers, and give a tip for attending if you are in Melbourne (or Sydney or Auckland where it's touring to through June).
That tip? Make sure you go to the brewery stalls, do it early as everyone else starts with the festival beers. And in the brewery stands go to Wildflower, now I've mentioned these guys before, they are based in Sydney and they do barrel aging, blending and sours, and so far everything they have produced has been amazing.
We got the only two beers they were pouring - The St Florence which is a spontaneous fermented beer, racked onto Sav Blanc grapes and chucked in a barrel for 10 weeks and then blended with another barrel aged brew. I know that sounds complex and it is, everything Wildflower do is complex but delicate and a real flavour journey.
Second up was The International is a beer which I think was tapped for the first time at GABS, it has a whole 11 check-ins on untappd - it was not quite a good at St Florence, it was a little thin, but still pretty darn amazing.
Anyway if you are going to GABS - go see Wildflower, they are awesome, other tips in the stalls, Sailor's Grave, and you can usually convince the staff at the AIBA stall to open something interesting for you.