Crafty Corner: The best on show at GABS

Bringing together the best breweries from Australia and New Zealand for a whirlwind craft beer carnival, GABS celebrates craft beer in the biggest way possible.

Craft beer enthusiasts descended on the International Convention and Exhibition Centre in Darling Harbour, as fans and brewers came face to face for a fun weekend.

The cornerstone of the GABS festival are its festival beers. Nearly 120 uniquely brewed beers exclusive to GABS.

Festival beers range from simple, but still tasty brews, to the most wild, and sometime confusing, drops.

This year a highlight for me was Atomic Beer Project's Atomic Lemon Whip, a kettle-sour, described as a lemon meringue pie sour.

At first look of its name it didn't catch my eye, but when I saw the bright drink with a toasted soft meringue on top I knew I had to give it a crack.

It was tart, but creamy with the sweet meringue top, that was made by the chefs at the brewery.

The balance was perfect and the drinks unique sticky, toasted topping mixed with a lemon sour was amazing.

Another of the stranger highlights was Precinct Brewing's Vanilla Cola Gose, which tasted like the nostalgic drink that it imitates.

I found Seasonal Brewing Co's Hazelnut Milkshake Nitro Stout to be gorgeous.

It was soft and creamy as a nitro stout should be, while still showing off its hazelnut, chocolate and vanilla flavours, which worked together perfectly.

Although I wasn't the biggest fan, some friends found Dollar Bill Brewing's Doge Crossing, "a 24-Month barrel-aged mixed culture beer rested on fresh young ginger and grated wasabi", to be one of their favourites.

One of the more simple, but still delectable, festival beers, was Mountain Culture's Awesome Beer, and it is just as the name describes.

It was so awesome that I quickly went back for seconds. The Milkshake IPA had a huge tropical fruit flavour, with some nice hops and a thick creaminess.

Mountain Culture head brewer, DJ McCready, said they were trying to work out how to name and explain what the beer was.

"We were putting together the recipe and were making names," he said. "And we're like, 'well, what are we trying to do?' We're trying to make the beer awesome and for people to have an awesome time.

"So we just went 'screw it. You know what? It's an awesome beer'. It sums it up, it's just awesome."

While the festival beers are the draw card for some people, it is the opportunity to meet and interact with the nation's best brewers that bring others to GABS.

With over 70 brewers, cider makers and distillers setting up stalls at the festival, there was always someone to have a talk to and learn more about the industry.

Some of the brewers brought their core range, continuing to get new visitors interested in what they're doing and growing as a brewery.

While others pull out all the stops to bring some of their most experimental works to a larger audience.

To me, the kings of weird beers at GABS, One Drop Brewing Co, had my favourite paddle of the weekend.

In one paddle I had an imperial glitter sour with tons of sweet fruit and marshmallow, Nano Tech - a lower alcohol hazy triple IPA , Baked Brownie - choc hash brownie pastry stout, Nitro Custard Pancake - a vanilla custard pancake thickshake IPA and the We Jammin' soft serve - a fruit smoothie sour.

These may sound like too much, but in truth they were all nice. I enjoyed every drink/soft serve here.

It was also interesting to meet a lot of the up and coming breweries from around the country, with many from NSW.

To see how rapidly growing the market is and how each individual brewer is trying to stand out.

Along with the great selection of beer, there was also a few cider and seltzer makers at GABS.

Frank's cider from Tasmania was my favourite. Both their cherry pear cider and their raspberry pear cider were not too sweet as many ciders can be, and went down perfectly.

I found it to be a great step up from many of the more mainstream ciders on the market and it seemed a lot of people agreed.

While beer tasting is the main attraction at GABS, there is plenty of other action going on.

There are performers circling the festival to keep everyone entertained, while the GABS academy rusn sessions throughout the days to teach fans the craft, and a silent disco got plenty of attendees up and dancing.

Individual breweries had their own attractions. Some had small games to play at the stall, like plinko, ring toss, retro arcade games and shuffleboard.

Others had bigger attractions, like Young Henry's 'Bucking Tinnie', Mountain Goat's cornhole, or Atomic's Wheel of Pourtune.

The highlight for many though was Balter's Tins of Glory, a sport created by brewery co-founder Stirling Howland.

The game involves a team of two sliding four cans of Balter down a 4.5m table to score points. The closer you are to the table's end the more points you get.

As extra bonus, the highest scoring team of the weekend would head to Balter brewery in the Gold Coast for the world championships.

A Balter staff member said it was a good opportunity for everyone to get involved and have a bit of fun doing something that they wouldn't normally do.

"We wanted a fun game to accompany beer drinking," they said.

"If you're the best athlete in the world or you're the laziest legend in the world, you're under the same advantage or disadvantage to be the best person in the world at this game.

"It's just a bit of fun."