What possesses someone to work out the average alcohol percentage of a beer at the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular? It’s a good question, because I’m far from a maths whiz.

Hell, I did Maths in Society in high school, which was variously known as; Veggie Maths, Maths in Space, Shopping Maths and “the subject that you do when your career path is likely to include a job where you ask people if they want fries with that”. So yeah, maths isn’t my strong suit – I hated it at school.

But I was looking through the list of GABS beers and noticing a few beers are posting big numbers. Little Brewing’s Mad Abbot Christmas Ale tops the list at 11.5 per cent, followed not too far behind by Bright Brewing’s oak-fermented barley wine at 10 per cent and 2 Brothers’ Magic Pudding sticky ale at 9.5 per cent.

Below that, there seemed to be a logjam of beers at seven and eight per cent (the beer with the lowest alcohol percentage? Young Henrys Kombucha beer at just 1.5 per cent). Perhaps it’s the idea that a special beer – as you could class a GABS beer – needs to be higher in alcohol than usual. Or perhaps we’re following the US path of rising alcohol percentages.

That – combined with wondering how many GABS beers I’ll be able to get through in my one day without falling asleep – made me wonder what the average alcohol content of a GABS beer would be. So I did the maths – adding all those percentages of the 92 beers together, while avoiding the duplication of the collaboration beers that appear on the GABS beer twice – and the answer surprised me a bit.

The average alcohol content is 6.09 per cent, which is a bit less that I expected (I would have tipped an answer in the low sevens). But still, it’s not a light beer.

Which gives me even more reason to take it easy on my day at GABS. As everyone should do at a beer festival.