Page 21 - Food & Drink Magazine April 2021

BEVERAGE BUSINESS
“It’s all the fun stuff that gets people excited, but we also have a focus on sessionability – beers that are full in flavour but you can also have more than one of.”
Farmer says dessert beers are more of a winter offering, although he notes that pastry sours could be considered dessert beers.
“We have one called Cool Whip coming out. It’s an apricot pie imperial pastry sour incorporating apricots and lactose,” Farmer says.
SEASON (AND GABS) PLAYING A ROLE
According to the IBA’s Luke Robertson, GABS, the annual Hottest 100 Craft Beers festival, has played a massive role in popularising dessert beers.
“GABS has really driven brewers to push the market,” he says. “The brewers are experimenting and seeing what sticks. The dessert beers all taste pretty good if they are done well – after all, who doesn’t want to drink a tiramisu beer after a meal?”
Along with GABS, seasonality is driving the dessert beer market.
Germain from Tallboy & Moose says the trend truly started around a decade ago with the rise of pumpkin beers in the North American and European markets.
“The only problem is that pumpkin spiced beer, as a trend, ended up getting beaten to death,” he observes. “Some people love them, but that trend hasn’t been as strongly reflected in Australia for seasonality reasons.”
Overall, he says, customers respond well to flavours and sensations they know and understand. If there’s a popular chocolate bar or dessert dish, if it’s well-executed in beer form, then people recognise it and want to try it.
“When it comes down to it, dessert beers are an interesting way to engage consumers. They are an iteration of something customers recognise and enjoy, and in the end, it’s all about havingabitoffun.” ✷
CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT:
Dessert beers let brewers create a fun point of difference.
Helen Black from The Coastal Brewing Company says dessert beers work well as the finale on a beer tasting pallet.
Coastal Brewing’s latest is a choc orange stout.
Tallboy & Moose brewery has a reputation for dessert beers, including its homage to the vanilla slice, its Nitro “Snot Block”.
www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au | April 2021 | Food&Drink business | 21