GABS Brewer: Josh Allen from Merchant Brewing Company

What sort of beer are you making for GABS?
The Fruit Tingle: the cocktail we love to hate and blamed all those messy nights on has been recreated as a beer.
Purple in colour from a butterfly pea flower infusion; the tart, boozy beer is overloaded with fruit to create tasty flavours of citrus and raspberry, complimented with a fruity dry hop and a small amount of lactose to give hints of sweetness.
A dry hopped, flower and fruit infused, lactose, kettle sour.

What’s it called?
A very original name- Fruit Tingle!

Where did the inspiration come from?
This was a bit of a notorious cocktail in our younger years- so is a throwback to those times

What’s the weirdest ingredient you’ve ever added to a beer?
We have done some pretty whack stuff at a home brew scale with questionable results haha.
Commercially, we have only been operating for two years so have not released a huge number of different beers to date. Saying that though, one of our core beers ‘Earl Pear’ blonde ale is infused with French Earl Grey Tea and Pear. To make this a bit more weird- we made a wild variation of it, with a brett blend in white wine barrels.
The addition of pea flower to this year’s GABS beer is a little weird we must admit.

GABS drinking preference – tasting paddles or a full glass?
Us lads at Merchant like to start on tasting paddles then move on to full beers.

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.