AG brew day: a little Gose long way....

[WelshPaul]

A lot of friends of mine have disappeared off to Leipzig for a music festival this weekend that I'm unable to attend. The bastards. However, their departure has given me an idea to re-create a fairly obscure German beer from that same region which pre-dates the Reinheitsgebot, a beer called Gose, brewed with coriander and brackish water.
Traditionally, the beer was not capped when it was put into bottles, but was instead put into bottles with tall, narrow necks and the yeast cake would have formed a natural cork. I am not doing this part...

http://www.germanbeerinstitute.com/Gose.html

Anyway, here's the recipe that I'll be attempting:

23l batch, 90 minute mash, 90 minute boil

3300g Wheat malt
1650g Pilsner malt
140g Aromatic malt
440g Acid malt

28g Saaz hops, 60 minutes
33g Coriander seeds, 10 minutes
33g sea salt, 10 minutes
Safbrew WB06 yeast

Yes, that is salt that's in the recipe! I'll be making a start on this tonight after work in order to save tomorrow for pub lunches and Eurovision.
The plan is to let primary fermentation end and then transfer it to a large glass carboy for 3 weeks to let the lactic acid come through. It's going to be an interesting one to say the least; I just hope that it works!

Definitely one of the more unusual ingredients I've added to a beer...

 

[PD]

Salt ??.............................. :sick:

 

[tommidolcetto]

.....and yeast??!

 

[pittsy]

yes i've read about Gose beer , i wondered what it would be like so keep us posted Paul , :thumb:

 

[PD]

quote pittsy

i wondered what it would be like.

Er..salty.

 

[WelshPaul]

33g into 23l litres is not a great amount. The lactic acid and the esters from the yeast should be a more dominant flavour than the salt, I think.

 

[Pearlfisher]

From Sharps website-

Panzerfaust (4.5% ABV), the first Black Gose beer to ever be created, is available now on limited release.

Part of a series of small batch brews, Panzerfaust was created by Head Brewer Stuart Howe in collaboration with beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones.

Adrian said: "Panzerfaust is tangy and appetising, a wonderful fusion of dark malts and fragrant dry hopping. There is a pungent fruitiness on the nose, a grown-up fruitiness that translates onto the palate with the soothing smoothness of mocha and chocolate notes. This is all held in suspension by this adult citrus fruitiness with a just beyond the palate hint of quenching sourness. I'm thinking of a very elegant black IPA."


Stuart Howe ( Sharps head brewer )

"Dry hopping and spontaneous fermentation brings me on to my latest WIGIG Panzerfaust, the world’s first, strongest and most environmentally-sound Gose. Panzerfaust is a collaboration brew with Adrian Tierney Jones, a man who once interviewed Morrissey for NME but is equally at home brawling on the pavement in Southwark in the early hours of the morning. The challenge was originally for me to brew a Gose true to the Leipzig tradition. I saw this as too easy and not craft enough so Black Gose was born.
Gose is a refreshing, sour beer with a high salt concentration so our black gose has a generous concentration of chloride, potassium and a good amount of sodium (too much makes the beer undrinkable). The sourness in the cask version comes from lactic acid derived from lactic acid bacteria which has been purified to remove the bugs. In the aged bottled version this will come from the spontaneous fermentation expected to happen at any time in the IBC in the yard of the brewery (or when it warms up maybe).


Sour, salty black beer does not sound appealing but a balance provided by non-fermentable sugars and dextrins from judiciously large amounts of special malts makes what is currently macerating in Simcoe in CT 16 multifariously enjoyable. So much so that the 9 pint sample keg I sent to Mr Tierney Jones’ Dartmoor estate disappeared overnight. So far it is a riddle of a beer, complex and refreshing and doesn’t drink like a black beer at all.

 

[Asalpaws]

Sounds interesting, I've heard people say salt enhances malty brews but 33g seems a lot. I take it your going with the acidulated malt rather than adding lacto? Keep us posted. T

 

[zgoda]

I had original Leipziger Gose at that Bahnhof brewpub. Was very nice, and the salty notes was not too prominent.

 

[WelshPaul]

Sounds interesting, I've heard people say salt enhances malty brews but 33g seems a lot. I take it your going with the acidulated malt rather than adding lacto? Keep us posted. T

Yes. I have a vial of Lactobacillus, but that is for another brew. This one will be using acid malt at under 10% of the grain bill.

 

[WelshPaul]

Brew day came and went, but with one slight problem: 10 minutes into the mash, I realised that I had forgotten to put the manifold into the mashtun! Cue emptying the whole lot and quickly putting the manifold in place. Luckily it only cost me a couple of degrees:

Messy!


Finished with 21 litres at 1048 gravity.

 

[Titus A Duxass]

I've tried Gose with and without syrup - foul!!

 

[WelshPaul]

The beer is finally all done and bottled away.
Tasting notes so far: the salt is noticable but not overpowering. Most of the flavour is coming from the wheat beer yeast so it's a fairly familiar flavour at the moment. There is a slight sour taste to the beer but not as much as I would have liked; maybe this will develop over the next few months in bottle.

In a nod to the tradition of allowing the fermenting beer to form a natural bung, I added a nice colourful blob of wax to these bottles.

 

[Will12283]

Looks good :thumb:, will be interesting to see what this is like in a few months.

 

[musher]

Is this the German version of Geuze ?

 

[zgoda]

Is this the German version of Geuze ?

No, this is wheat beer, soured by lactic bacteria. Another kind of weird beer. ;-)