Beer & Bar - The Local Taphouse Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular (GABS)

Time for me to join the chorus and encourage everyone to come along to the Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular at The Local Taphouse in Melbourne or Sydney this Saturday!

Event: The Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular
Date and Time: Saturday February 12th – midday until midnight
Location: MELBOURNE: The Local Taphouse – 184 Carlisle Street, East St Kilda, VIC. SYDNEY: The Local Taphouse - 120 Flinders Street, Darlinghurst.
Cost: Gold coin (or more) donation, with all proceeds going to the Red Cross Queensland Flood Appeal.
More info: The Local Taphouse blog

Why is this event such a big deal, you ask?

Well, here are some reasons why I am excited about it...

1. 19 never-before-seen beers have brewed specifically for the event by Australian independent microbreweries, all of which showcase the craft of good beer. This includes two first-time collaborations, with Red Hill Brewery & Hargreaves Hill Brewery combining under the name "Two Hills" to create a Maibock and South Australia's BrewBoys & Lobethal Bierhaus have brewed a Quince Ale together. Personally, I am most excited about the Holgate Imperial Mocha Porter and the Burleigh Brewing Fanny Gertrude’s Anzac Bickie Beer!
2. Many brewers will be in attendance, presenting you with an intimate opportunity to connect with the people behind the beers you are drinking. Furthermore, the crowd will be filled with good beer folk such as writers, retailers, homebrewers and industry affiliates.
3. This event is the inaugural occasion of what The Local Taphouse hopes to make an annual festival, with plans to expand the concept to a large scale nation-wide event to potentially rival similar international beer festivals, which we currently envy. Therefore, one day you may be able to tell your craft beer loving grandchildren that you were there at the beginning of GABS (...or does that just appeal to me?).

However, most of all the simply incredible tap line-up is a showcase of craft beer like we have never seen before in Australia and will surely provide at least one new delicious discovery for everyone.

One must note that there have been three withdrawals from the original announcement of participating breweries. The newly established Moon Dog and Thunder Road breweries, as well as WA's Mash Brewing, have all decided that the beers they had produced were not up to scratch for the event. Hence, they have made the tough call not to tap a possibly inferior product and withdrawn from the event.

Nonetheless, as I noted in my Brews News article, GABS promises to be no lesser of an event without the full line-up initially announced. With the Moon Dog, Thunder Road and Mash omissions, it simply makes the task for choosing and sampling the range of beers on offer the slightest bit easier:

• Original Fassbier — Kellerbier matured on roasted oak chips (Last Drop, WA, 4.6%)
• Cucumber Sandwich — Summer Ale (Mountain Goat, VIC, 4.2%)
• kb — Kriek Berliner Weisse served through morello cherries (Wig & Pen, ACT, 4.3%)
• Organic Blueberry Hefeweizen (Otway Estate, VIC, 5%)
• Belgian Raspberry Wit (Kooinda, VIC, 5.5%)
• Fanny Gertrude’s Anzac Bickie Beer — Oats, coconut & vanilla ale (Burleigh Brewing, QLD, 5%)
• Red Relief (Stone & Wood, NSW, 4.7%)
• Cherry Bomb — Cherry and coconut porter (True South, VIC, 5%)
• Quince Ale (Lobethal and Brew Boys Collaboration, SA, 5.6%)
• Zephyr — Double White Ale (Doctors Orders Brewing, NSW, 5.6%)
• Chocolate Chilli Porter (Hunter, NSW, 5.8%)
• 2 Hills Maibock (Collaboration between Hargreaves Hill and Red Hill Breweries, VIC, 6.8%)
• Wee Heavy (4 Pines, 7.8%)
• Rye IPA (Mash, WA)
• The Secret Romance of Herman van Rompuy and Cherry Poppens - Belgian style Flanders red (Moondog, VIC, 7.3%)
• Karma Citra — Black IPA showcasing the Citra hop (Feral, WA, 5.9%)
• Lemon Myrtle IPA (Jamieson, VIC, 7%)
• The Empress — Imperial Mocha Porter (Holgate, VIC, 10%)
• Big Red Rocket — Imperial Red Ale (Bridge Road, VIC, 9%)
• Imperious — Imperial Belgian Blond Ale (Murrays, NSW, 11%)
• The Guvnor — English Barley Wine (2 Brothers, VIC 10.3%)

I will be at the Melbourne Taphouse, hopefully from midday so I don't miss out on anything. Hope to see you there...say hi if you see me! Cheers.