Going Sour

We are releasing our first kettle-soured beer this Friday, a Gose (pronounced Goes-uh), named Surfer Gose (4%).  Surfer Gose is a German-style wheat beer brewed with salt and coriander and soured with a lactobacillus culture.  It has an almost lemon-like tartness and a mild saltiness, and is super refreshing. This is the ultimate thirst-quenching, session beer.

While you may have heard of coriander in beer before (most popularly in Belgian witbier), you may be wondering why salt?  The Gose style dates back to the 16th Century and is named after the river Gose that runs through the town of Goslar where it originated. The groundwater of that area had high amounts of dissolved salt, and since they didn’t have water treatment facilities back then, this slightly salty water was used in the brewing of their local beer.

Alex and Matt finish up the brew day after the kettle sour process.

 

To get the characteristic sourness of this style, we added a lactobacillus culture (lactic acid producing bacteria, similar to what’s used in making yoghurt) to the wort prior to boiling. The bacteria were left to do their magic in the beer over a couple of days, in order to drop the pH to the desired sourness level. Then we boiled the wort to kill off the bacteria, and continued with the brew as usual, adding hops and then the coriander and salt towards the end of the boil. The beer was then cooled and fermented with our regular American ale yeast strain.

Surfer Gose is a great entry-level sour beer for those new to sour beer styles, and will be available for growler fills and on tap at our Tasting Room starting Friday, July 7th.