'Fantastic' green curry beer heads to Melb

Green curry and beer in the one glass may sound like strange bedfellows but a bold Tasmanian brewer believes it's a "match made in heaven".

Paul Morrison's concoction will be poured at a beer festival in Melbourne starting on Friday, alongside sea urchin stout and a beer inspired by the cannabis-laced Indian drink Bhang Thandai.

"It tastes just fantastic - it's like a big spoonful of green curry and rice. You get the beer coming through in the background," the Launceston-based brewer told AAP.

The Tasmanian micro-brewer admits mixing Asian food with beer is "quite an unusual combination" but it's not the first time he's done it.

At last year's Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular, Mr Morrison arrived with a Vietnamese hot and sour dipping sauce ale.

"We have a strong love for Asian food and the aromatics in green curry work really well with our Saigon mix, so it seemed like a match made in heaven," he said.

With chilli drinks and vanilla milkshake brews also trucked into Melbourne, the menu at the three-day festival is sure to raise some eyebrows.

"That's the exciting thing about beer is that in some ways there is no limit to the flavours you can put into a beer," GABS co-founder Steve Jeffares told AAP.

"You're only limited by the imagination of the brewers."

Close to 200 Australasian breweries are expected to attend the festival in Melbourne, with all of them pouring a specially crafted festival beer.

The brewers will then pop into Sydney on May 27 before arriving in Auckland in mid-June.

The festival's seventh edition comes amid a surge in craft beer sales in Australia.

Despite a drop in the amount of beer Australians consume, Deloitte says the domestic craft beer market is growing at 10 per cent a year.

But it's still just a fraction of the total market, accounting for only $1 of every $20 Australia spends on beer.