Jack Milbank likes beer!

Jack Milbank likes bugs!

Jack Milbank makes beer using bugs!

Jack Milbank says, as a microbiologist and agronomist, his job is to combat different pathogens that are affecting crop yields.

"We work with a lot of macadamia, rock melons, tomatoes and the major cause of yield loss is fungal or bacterial pathogens," he said.

"I started brewing beneficial bacteria that would out-compete the pathogenic bacteria." Listen Duration: 5 minutes 1 second 5 m Listen Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Crafting beer from macadamias, sweet potato and ginger ( Robin McConchie ) Download 2.3 MB

"We then thought that there might be something a bit sexier, that we might be able to ferment and that lead me into craft beer."

"We have such a bountiful supply of local ingredients, it is about using unique ingredients to produce fantastic quality beer."

As a scientist, Mr Milbank was on a hunt and believes he is on a winner. Macadamia blossoms are being used to make yeast to make beer. ( Supplied )

"We then went down our own path of trying to isolate different strands of yeast from macadamia blossoms to try and get that local flavour and aroma that we associate with Bundaberg," he said.

"In essence, yeast converts sugar to alcohol and we isolated 15 strains of yeast from one macadamia flower."

"We selected macadamia to be a hardy native yeast, which could survive in adverse conditions like high alcohol."

He said the next challenge was to combine the yeasts to help craft the beer he wanted.

"One species will give you the aroma, another the alcohol conversion, another species will be more alcohol tolerant," he said.

"So we need four or five species of yeast in combination, to deliver the result that we need, to ferment the sugars in the grain to alcohol."

Mr Milbank said he was very pleased with the trials, but the fermentation was too slow using macadamia yeast, so he developed a combination of yeasts to produce the macadamia-flavoured and perfumed beer he wanted economically.

He said craft beers were extremely popular — "people like beer" — and restaurants were commissioning beers to go with their menu.

Rural news in your inbox? Subscribe for the national headlines of the day.

A new venture Mr Milbank is investigating is, gluten-free beer made from sweet potato.