GABS Brewer: Tim Thomas from HopDog BeerWorks from Nowra, NSW

What beer are you making for GABS?
We’re making a hybrid ale/cider, called a Graff. It’ll be a kettle soured, blended fermentation of local apple juice and wort, dry hopped

What’s it called?
Our Graff is called Electrostatic Graff

Where did the inspiration come from?
For the beer: it’s a made up style from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. It’s a melding of cider and beer, described as slightly tart strong mildly hopped cider. The name: need you ask? We were throwing around ideas to do with Graff, Stephen King, bad puns, Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, and voila!

Tell us why you have chosen to brew a Festival Beer for GABS
It’s more than anything become an expectation of us to brew for GABS. This is our fifth year of being part of the festival, and we’re lifting our game to another level.

Finish this sentence, ‘‘one thing I would like to change about craft beer is…’’
How loosely the term “craft” can be bandied about. We spend more of our week at the brewery taproom explaining where we sit in an ever growing industry, and where the pseudo-craft beers nuzzle themselves in at the teat of the small brewers amongst us.

 

The Great Australasian Beer Spectapular is on May 20-22 at the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton, Victoria, May 27-28 at the Australian Technology Park in Eveleigh, NSW and June 18 at ASB Showgrounds, Greenlane, Auckland.