Hunter and Central Coast brewers enter the GABS Craft Beer & Cider Festival

Local brewers across the Central Coast and Hunter have been busy creating unique brews with flavours you won’t believe. See what they are ready to unveil at the GABS beer festival.

Central Coast and Hunter breweries are showing off their creative flare adding flavours such as creme brulee, smores and rum to their latest brews.

The breweries are keen to stamp their ground at this years Great Australasian Beer Spectacular (GABS) starting on May 7 in Sydney and then moving onto Melbourne and Brisbane.

The festival, celebrating it’s 10th year, brings together the best breweries from Australia and New Zealand and is described as ‘Beer Christmas’ ‘Disneyland for beer lovers’.

If gives craft beer lovers the chance to try out 120 festival beers never before tasted on Aussie soil. Many of the beers end up going into full time production.

Our Coast and Hunter entries include Six Strings Brewing Co (Erina), Iron Bark Hill Brewing Co (Pokolbin), Bay Road Brewing (Gosford) and Hope Brewery (Pokolbin).

The GABS festival is described as ‘Disneyland for beer lovers’.

Six Strings Brewing Co (Erina) – Creme Brulee Stout;

The team at Six Strings has add a dessert flare to their latest brew, describing it as “a smooth, sweet stout with a burnt toffee, flavours or caramel and vanilla giving the impression of the rich vanilla custard and caramelised sugar.

“This will be served at GABS with an actual custard and a crunchy burnt sugar topping,” the team at the coast based brewery said.

The brewing notes include a “baked vanilla flavour” by adding vanilla bean extract, 12 different specialty malts including black malt and roasted barley paired with caramel and toffee malts.

Six Strings Brewing Co at Erina are entering a Creme Brulee Stout in the GABS Festival

Six Strings Lead Brewer Kyle Mckinnon.

Iron Bark Hill Brewing Co (Pokolbin) – Smore Beer;

The Brewing Co have based their creation on winter vibes.

“For us, winter is sitting around a campfire, roasting marshmallows and sharing a few beers with mates,” the team said.

“It’s also reminiscing of past travels of eating delicious smores on the snowfields of Lake Tahoe. These memories formed the inspiration for our GABS Festival beer – our chocolate marshmallow stout, That’s a Smore”.

“We started with a sweet chocolate stout base, then added freshly baked graham cracker cookies (baked on-site by our Chef) straight into the mash. After adding fire roasted marshmallows (which we toasted using our pizza oven) we carefully added sweet fragrant vanilla and spicy cinnamon. The result? A deliciously toasty, sweet and smoky chocolate stout that will have you asking for smore.”

Iron Bark Hill’s head brewer Andrew Drayton mixes in the graham crackers to the brew.

Hope Brewery (Pokolbin) – Single Hop TIPA – Oat Cream IPA

Hope Brewery said they team had been working long and hard on their new release, a Single Hop TIPA – Oat Cream IPA.

“For GABS 2021, our fans have been asking us to have a crack at the Oat Cream IPA style,” they said.

“We thought we would brew a Single Hop TIPA featuring the new Idaho 7 hop. Packed full of tangerine and tropical flavours and aromas, with the creaminess of the oats and lactose that has become highly sought after from this new style of IPA.”

Hope Brewery owner Michael Hope and brewer Henry Harman.

Bay Rd Brewing (Gosford) – Tropical Rum NEIPA

Bay Rd Brewing has created a Tropical Rum NEIPA for the festival.

“Summon your inner pirate and journey to the dark side of the tropics with this Double Dark Tropical Rum New England IPA,” they said in their description.

“This beer tricks the senses with dark malts while releasing tropical notes of mango and pineapple with hints of rum to finish.”

Bay Rd Brewing has conjured up a Tropical Rum NEIPA

GABS organiser, Mike Bray said the beers and ciders are made by Australia and New Zealand’s leading brewers and cider makers.

“Many of these brews go on to be legends in the brewing world, for example Feral’s Biggie Juice, Two Birds Taco beer and Yeastie Boys Gunnamatta, which were launched as GABS festival beers, but are now staples in the craft brewing,” he said.

“We will be celebrating these legends at the 10th Edition as well as the new festival beers,”

continued Bray.

While beer and ciders are he main events of the show, there are also roaming entertainers, panel discussions with brewers, cooking demonstrations, food and truck vendors, whisky bars, beer hall games and live music.