GEELONG | The summer beer festival train continues to roll on and the next stop is at the Great Australian Beer Festival Geelong (or GABF for short), which is coming up on Saturday 6 February.
Not to be confused with GABS (the newly renamed GABS Beer and Food Fest), GABF is now in its fourth year and will offer over 200 craft beers and ciders for you to try, as well as live music across two stages and a ‘keg rolling contest’ (which we are quite interested to see!). Headlining the Australian contingent will be our good friends from Temple Brewing, the usual suspects from the innner north including 3 Ravens and Cavalier Brewing, as well as (almost) locals Blackman’s Brewing and the good people from the other peninsula, Mornington Peninsula Brewery. There will also be an impressive range of overseas craft beers on offer including the crazy Danes from Evil Twin and Mikkeller, and American breweries Red Hook and Kona.
With all great beer festivals these days comes great food and GABF is no exception. The food on offer covers the full range from a number of slow cooked meat (which would appear to be flavour of the month – pun intended) options including Digging for Fire BBQ and Zed & Co, Argentinean specialists Senor BBQ, Vietnamese food truck Nuoc Mama’s as well as pizza, vegan and even parma options.
As is standard at all festivals a token system will be used for purchasing food and drink. Tokens are worth $2.00 each and can either be purchased when purchasing tickets online or on the day. Unfortunately unused tokens cannot be refunded, but they can be used for their full value at the Crust Pizza locations in Geelong and Belmont up until 20 February. In terms of beer and cider purchases:
- One token = 100 ml beer
- Two tokens = 200 ml beer
- Four tokens = 150 ml wine (one standard glass)
Note that some brewers may have speciality and/or high alcohol beers available that may cost extra tokens.
If you’re in Victoria during the first weekend in February we would highly recommend that you head over to Geelong and check out GABF. Brunswick Beer Collective members Jeff, Chris and Paul will also be there recording live and enjoying the food and beer on offer (so do stop by and say hi if you see us around!). To help you get to the festival location there will be a shuttle bus running from South Geelong train station (for $2.00 per trip) every 15 minutes which will also be doing a stop in Geelong CBD after 7:00pm for those looking to kick on.
Great Australian Beer Festival Geelong
Where: Geelong Racecourse, 99 Breakwater Road, Breakwater, Victoria 3219, Australia
When: Saturday 6 Feb 2016, 12:00pm to 8:00pm
Cost: Presale tickets are available for $29.50 plus booking fees for entry only or $69.50 plus booking fees for entry plus 20 tokens. Entry only tickets will also be available for $40.00 at the gate (unless sold out).