What is an alcohol-free Gose?
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With the release of our latest summer fruited beer, Ocean Drift Gooseberry Gose, we're here to answer, what is a Gose?
Hailing from the town of Goslar in Germany, Gose is a historical beer style with a peculiar flavour profile. Unique within beer, examples of Gose exhibit three main flavours, a mild acidity from the wild fermentation, herbal notes usually derived from coriander additions and a distinctive saltiness from the water. You may be reading this thinking "that doesn't sound very refreshing at all", but something special happens when the three combine.
At one point the story of Gose was almost left to the history books, production ceased worldwide in the 1960s and the style was not produced for the first time since perhaps the middle ages. But since the revival of a Gose bar in Leipzig and the dedication of a number of homebrewers, the style has quickly become a favourite across the world. Modern examples have often moved away from the traditional style with the introduction of fruit to the beer, adding yet more fermentable sugars and other flavours to the mix.
This is where we come in.
Making an alcohol-free wild-fermented beer isn't a simple thing. With normal beers, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, you would typically use a single yeast strain to ferment your beer. However with this beer we introduced a lactobacillus bacteria to the fermentation, adding the complexity of acidity to the beer. Add to the mixture of yeast and bacteria a load of fresh fruit, coriander and salt and we had a job on our hands. With all that extra sugar and fruit components it made for a lot more work than normal but after some careful control and smart problem solving we've released the beer meeting all of our usual standards. Alcohol-free, gluten-free and vegan.
Ocean Drift is like a fresh salty sea breeze blowing through a gooseberry bush, with a rounded fruit character and a hint of pithy citrus, you can't help but keep coming back for another sip.
