And So it Gose: A Review of Two Very Different Beers
Michael Koger, Contributing Writer
Beer is best shared between two people.
I recently acquired two very interesting beers, so I called my buddy Andrew, with whom I brew beer, to share them with me and play some cards.
The beers in question are Samuel Adams’ Verloren Gose and Firestone Walker’s XV Anniversary. Both beers are very unique for completely different reasons and are reviewed below separately.
Gose is one of the least represented beer style categories you can possibly think of. With its history tracing back to ancient Saxony, what separates Gose beers from other beer styles is its defining ingredient: Salt.
All Gose beers are made with salt. It’s up to the brewers to decide how much salt to use. This is only the second Gose I’ve ever had, so I don’t have much to which to compare it. However, it still proves to be an interesting and decent beer. Clocking in at 6 percent alcohol-by-volume, Verloren is not a heavy beer. It pours with decent carbonation and the beer itself is a light orange color when held up to the light. It smells sweet. The notes on the back of the bottle tell the drinker it is a wheat based beer and it definitely tastes like a sweetened hefeweizen. The salt isn’t very noticeable, but it’s there if you really look for it. The one other Gose I had, The Bruery’s Salt of the Earth, was very salt forward. However, this was nice. Verloren is also made with coriander which blends nicely with the sweet, almost fruit like, notes.
