Westbrook Gose
Brewery: Westbrook
Type: Gose
Alcohol: 4%
Country: USA
This is my Halloween review.(imagine I am reading this to you in a dark forest around a campfire with a flashlight held up to my face) You may be wondering why I chose this obscure German style beer for this occasion. Well I will tell you. Brewed long ago in Germany this was one of the few beers to get a pass on the purity laws (making it impure! spooky music plays). Basically extinct in modern times it was resurrected by American craft brewers, using arcane rituals and fresh virgin IPA sacrifices. Now it is allowed to roam the earth again, converting people to sour beer all over the globe as it goes. You see this is a sour wheat beer, made with sea salt and coriander. When I tell people it is a sour salty beer, it is usually enough to scare them away from trying it. That makes it the perfect Halloween beer!
Pours a hazy yellowish orange, like old wet straw on an abandoned farm filled with slashers. Very thin white head that fizzles out quicker then the plot of the average horror movie. Ok I will stop with that. The nose is very acidic, but fresh, something like a cross between lemon juice and vinegar. Under that is a vague old wheat smell. The taste is like a jump scare to the mouth. Kind of shocking on the first sip. Intense mouth puckering tartness, fresh and intense, again like a shot of lemon juice. The coriander is a nebulous spice notes in the background that plays very nicely with the lactic sourness and the saltiness. Yes this beer is salty. Subtle at first but you start to notice it more and more with each sip. While having salt in beer might sound crazy, here it actually really adds to the brightness of this beer. It compliments the sour notes and adds a cool little complexity to the finish that somehow avoids being mouth drying but only makes you want to take another sip. The body is thinnish, with that wheat silkiness and a touch of dryness. I will admit I was a bit scared of this beer at first. I actually bought two cans, one to just drink and get impressions on, and another to review. After the first can I thought, like most sour beers for me, I enjoy the experience of drinking it, but I would probably never return to it. The second can really changed my mind. Sour salty and interesting, and somehow incredibly refreshing despite how intense it might seem. I don't think I could drink a six pack, but as a little treat, this beer is scary good.
