GABS Brewer: David Neitz, co-founder of Brewmanity

What sort of beer are you making for GABS?
An Eisbock. It’s a collaboration with Colonial, blended with flavours from a Starward Whiskey barrel – we expect it to come in at around 9% but we’ll let you know when we know!

What’s it called?
Whiskey on Eisbock.

Where did the inspiration come from?
As part of our philosophy of Good Beer, Good Deeds, and Good Times, Brewmanity are big supporters of the Cure for MND Foundation. So we played on the success of their fundraising events like the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ and the ‘Big Freeze at the G’, and figured that we should have a go at the brewers equivalent of the ‘Big Freeze’ by making an Eisbock.
We’ve split the brew into two to make a traditional Eisbock for our Good Beer Week fundraising event – ‘Beer vs Beast’ – but we wanted to add something a little extra special for our GABS beer. A Whiskey on Ice-bock seemed to make a hell of a lot of sense!

What’s the weirdest ingredient you’ve ever added to a beer?
Brewmanity hasn’t gone too far out there on the weirdness scale just yet – but our brewer Mick Jontef has played around with chilli, mussels and oysters in his time. He reckons the mussels tasted pretty nice after spending some time in the kettle too.

GABS drinking preference – tasting paddles or a full glass?
I’ll run with paddles for the main part with a few full glasses of my favourites thrown into the mix – thats a balanced approach to beer yeah!?

The Great Australasian Beer Spectapular is on May 19-21 at the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton, Victoria, May 27 at Sydney Showground Olympic Park, NSW and June 16-17 at ASB Showgrounds, Greenlane, Auckland.