“What in the Lord Fuck is a Rye Gose?”

I’m sure you’re probably asking yourself that question right now. If you’re not, you can stop reading since you probably don’t care what it is. But if you’re not a total dick and would like to hear more, please continue reading below.

Rye Gose is a style of beer that I made up. There’s already a style of beer called Gose that’s not very well known outside of the beer nerd crowd. Even within the beer nerd crowd it’s probably near the bottom of the list of Things the Average Beer Nerd Has Heard Of. In other words, it’s old and cool and German and you probably never heard of it.

A traditional Gose is typically brewed with 50-60% wheat, a small amount of hops, and coriander and salt for flavoring. It’s supposed to be a little sour too. You might think of it as a salty/sour Witbier. Actually, you might not cause you don’t know shit, but trust me. That’s kinda what it is. I know it sounds weird. Salt flavored beer. But it’s good. You should try it.

I’ve only had one commercial Gose and that was some weird Sam Adams thing, part of this limited “brewmasters” series or something. It had an owl on the bottle. Here it is. Verloren, it’s called.

After having the Sam Adams version it went right onto my “to brew” list and stayed there.

There’s a local homebrew competition coming up called “Battle of the Homebrew Shops” where several homebrew shops in the Philly area hold competitions and then the winner of each of those competitions competes in another competition to see who’s the best competitor in the area, homebrewing-wise. Last year I brewed a beer for this competition and then forgot to enter. Needless to say I was not the best competitor in the area last year.

Every year the competition has a different theme. Last year, all first round entries had to be session beers ( < 4.5% ABV) and then the second round had something to do with coffee but I didn’t get to the second round so who gives a shit.

This year the first round entries have to use rye malt in some way. For some reason one of the first ideas I came up with was to finally brew a Gose and just use rye malt in place of some (most) of the wheat. I was thinking about switching the coriander with caraway seeds to really go for a rye bread kind of thing but decided against it. And by “decided against it”, I mean that I totally forgot and then was pissed when I remembered and it was too late. Either way, it seems like an obscure enough style that I’ll at least get a few points for originality.

Update 3/17/13 – I have no idea if I got any points for originality but I do know that some other dude won the first round so that means I didn’t win shit. The beer was pretty good though. I’ll probably make it again soon. Seems like a good summer beer.

RYE GOSE

Brewed on Dec 27, 2012

Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 11.60
Estimated OG: 1.052
Estimated SRM: 5.0
Estimated IBU: 10.7
Brewhouse Efficiency: 72%
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes


Grains
----------
5 lb Rye Malt
4 lb Pilsner
2 lb Acidulated Malt
8 oz White Wheat Malt
1.5 oz Crystal 60L

Hops
----
0.75 oz Hallertau - 60 minutes

Other Additions
---------------
1 Whirlfloc tablet - 15 minutes
1 oz kosher salt - 10 minutes
0.5 oz coriander - 10 minutes

Yeast
-----
1 L starter White Labs Kolsch/German Ale (WLP029)

Mash
----
105 min @ 150-145 F

Notes
-----
Mashed all grains except the acid malt for 6 minutes. 
Added the acid malt and 2 L boiling water (to keep temps stable) 
and then let it sit for another 45 min to lower ph.

Mash volume was 4.25 gallons and 1st runnings were 1.85 gallons 
for a loss of 2.4 gallons to grain absorption. Normal amount would be 
around 1.4 gallons. Not sure what happened but I probably should have 
added some rice hulls to get better drainage.

Sparged with 4 gallons. Ended up with 6 gallons of wort. 
Added .22 gallons to get to pre-boil volume of 6.22 gallons.

Jan 17, 2013 - FG stable at 1.010 (4.7% ABV)