Craft brewers showcase their wackiest beers at GABS

But some of this year's most exciting entrants at the Great Australasian Beer Spec-tap-ular (GABS) are having more fun experimenting with texture.

Brewers are finding new ways to layer creamy textures into their beers - from fluffy pina colada lagers to foamy ice-cream spiders.

And customers are turning out in droves to meet the mad scientists behind their favourite pints.

The GABS festival travelled down Australia's east coast, stopping at Brisbane and Sydney before finishing at Melbourne's Royal Exhibition Building where hundreds of lager-lovers work their way through 60 beer and cider stalls over three days.

The annual GABS festival is a chance for the nation's boundaries-pushing brewers to come together. It's a room full of artists where beer is the medium.

One brewer described GABS as an alcoholic science fair for adults.

"I love that brewers make things that didn't exist before, everyone I know who works in beer is creative," he said.

Stalls are decked out in brightly-coloured carnival drapery with arcade games, slushy machines and karaoke.

The room is flanked with beer hall benches where punters work through paddles of the smile-inducing concoctions.

Many classic beers share the same bright and energetic bubble from the carbon dioxide brewers capture in the liquid.

But nitrogen gas fuelled beers were a popular style at this year's festival.

"It's like a fruity glass of Guinness," one excited punter said after trying a berry sour beer under nitrogen.

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Nitrogen gas produces tiny bubbles that slowly break across the tongue to create a silky foam.

Good Land Brewing in Traralgon Victoria brought their "Bananarama Pina Colada" beer which boasts the texture of a freshly whipped meringue.

"It's sweet and tangy - the sourness is perfectly balanced with the airy coconut," brewer Jimmy Krekelberg said.

"It's a smoothie-style beer."

GABS 2023 was an unexpected minefield for someone with lactose intolerance. Brewers used milk and ice-cream to create a creamy clash in their sour beers or to add richness to their dessert draughts.

Brisbane's Aether brewing poured their Biscoff beer into half the punter's glasses and topped the bitter and nutty brew with soft serve ice-cream to make a "beer spider".

"If you can imagine what ice cream does to soft drink, our Biscoff spider works the same way with beer," Aether's Andre Howe said.

Cherry, raspberry and blueberry sours were the toast of the festival's leisurely Sunday afternoon session.

"Berries trick your palette in thinking you're drinking something sweet. But if you look at the sugar content in the beer, it's not sweet at all," Kaiju owner Nat Reeves said.

Melbourne's Kaiju experimented with berry-flavoured sours until they found their perfect recipe, he said.

"You can add fruit during fermentation and let the sugar and fruit melt together or add fruit after fermentation - but you've got to pasteurise," he said.

"Otherwise you'll get an exploding beer," he said.