Festival beers

Chocolate cherry porter will be just one of the unusual flavours available at Auckland’s newest beer festival.

The GABS Beer, Cider and Food Festival is being brought across the ditch for the first time to showcase New Zealand and international craft beers.

The festival has a focus on unique beers with dozens of experimental brews being made specially for the event.

Festival co-director Steve Jeffares says the only limitations to the festivals beers is the imaginations of the brewers.

‘‘They can submit any beer they like as long as they’ve never brewed it before.

‘‘This year’s festival beers incorporated everything from peanut butter, rice, spiced rocket leaves, blueberries and apricots to strawberry jelly, with an increasing number fermented and aged in old wine and spirit barrels,’’ Jeffares says.

The brewers of the Aucklandbased Funk Estate are infusing blood orange, lemon and passionfruit to create a pink, hazy, soured fruit beer.

While Rotorua-based brewery Croucher Brewing is using merlot barrels to create a seasonal chocolate cherry porter for the cooler months.

The porter has been left to age for 18 months prior to the event.

The festival was started in 2012 by Steve Jeffares and Guy Greenstone and is run annually in Melbourne and Sydney.

GABS Beer, Cider & Food Festival Auckland will be held on June 18 at the ASB Showgrounds in Greenlane.

Visit gabsfestival.com for more information.