Summer Gose Way Too Fast

Monday in mid-July has snuck up on me and I haven't even tasted a 1/4 of the beers I've wanted too. Sadly, during the hottest days of the summer I've experienced here in the last few years I was not drinking beer, mostly water to stay hydrated. Today the weather is overcast with decent unexpected sun breaks to remind us that it is still summer, but a whole lot cooler than last week.

I'm sitting in my favorite pub and in keeping with my usual luck the first beer I toss out to my favorite server, is out. She just hadn't had a chance to cross it off the beer list, the Ninkasi Radiant which is their summer ale. I've never been disappointed with Ninkasi and their Total Domination IPA is a crowd-pleasing standby I like to keep around the house. So no, Ninkasi for me today. Instead I pick the Cascade Gose. I needed a brief reminder on the description of the beer style. My mind remembered it was a wheat beer but the odd flavor characteristics I wasn't sure of. What stands out is the salty aftertaste. At first I thought it was just a bad food choice, because of my bad habit of choosing foods that don't sit well with the beers I am drinking. Today's choices were mac and cheese and plain chicken wings. I'm in a bland mood today.

I wanted salt in my mac and cheese not my beer but after a few sips of beer and bites of pasta I'm enjoying the beer more. The Gose is a beautiful golden color, cloudy (it's a wheat beer after all) with hardly any head, though there are constant streams of bubbles I can see. I can taste the sharpness of the coriander in the back of my mouth, and the saltiness is a little over powering. If I was eating some thing that didn't actually need salt, I don't think I would like this beer, but because most of the food I'm eating is in desperate need of salt I'm ok with this. This beer actually makes the cheese taste creamier. It's not a favorite. I think I would need to be considerably more desperate from the heat and activity on a summer's day to order this again. I can see it's appeal as a refreshing beer and one that many would find tasty. Just not me and not today.

It's off my beer bucket list so I feel proud of myself with that one. Nice spur to get me thinking about my next brew day though. The plan is to make the braggot this month and the brown ale next month and somewhere in there get a couple gallons of apfelwein made and maybe one made from a seasonal fruit.