Tonight I joined in with beer enthusiasts across Ireland as we tasted Brown Paper Bag Project’s latest mystery beer. The bottle came wrapped with strict instructions not to remove the paper bag until the tasting was over.
Of course I bulled straight in and declared what style I thought it was. I am a Taurus after all. (If you go for that kind of thing).
The beer foamed a little when I popped the cap but the head settled quickly after I poured it. It’s a slightly hazey orangey golden coloured beer. The aroma is a little cidery, sweet and fruity. The taste is more bitter than you’d expect from the smell but it wouldn’t make your mouth pucker either. Based on this I decided that this beer was a Lambic style brew. I was wrong. Well I was mostly wrong.
It’s a beer brewed in collaboration with Fanoe Bryghus from Denmark. They decided together to revive an almost forgotten style called Gose. Irish and Danish sea salt, coriander and a sour mash were all used to achieve the unique taste. The beer was fermented with wild yeast just as Lambics are. So I wasn’t completely off the beaten track! The banter on Twitter really added to the experience of drinking a brand new mysterious brew. A very enjoyable way to spend an evening. Gose is available now in some good off licences in Dublin and a couple around the country.
Almost forgotten, but achingly fashionable at the moment.
It really is hard to keep up, someone will make a whiskey barrel aged saison and all of us beer nerds will spontaneously combust!
Like the ones The Kernel has been pumping out this last few months? So passé…
We’re all about the black rye Kölsch this week. Do keep up, Simon.
I try to make a virtue of my ignorant innocence…
Probably wise when it comes to black rye Kölsch.
And I think the Kernel saisons are in red wine barrels rather than whiskey, to be fair. Whiskey is yesterday’s barrel.
Can you see a move back to basics or will this trend of novelty continue ad infinitum?
It’s been going a long time and I don’t see any sign of it slowing down. In fact, it’s going mainstream: the best gose I drank last year was made by Molson Coors.
Hippy wigs in Woolworths, man.
What are the odds? It’s a topsy turvy world but we’ll stick with it and try to find good honest brews.