Lucky Luke’s Billie Cantaloupe Gose

How ya’ll doing! It’s been another eventful two weeks right. Due to working from home, I can’t seem to keep straight what day of the week it is at any given time, and I’ve had a chronic headache for the last week or two. I’m also getting really tired of people with houses, yards, balconies, and dogs complain about how hard quarantine is for them. Oh, boohoo. Try living in a studio with no fucking airflow, where the only outside time I’m getting is when I drunkenly stand on the fire escape just to feel alive.

I’m also upset because I reserved the public library’s free pass to the Tar Pits museum for Good Friday, which everyone in the film industry apparently has off for some reason, but now instead of my alternate plan of watching trash tv all day, I have to endure the boyfriend playing the Final Fantasy VII remake he pre-ordered. Oh yes, he took a vacation day to play the game the second it is released. We used to have 2 televisions, now we have one, guess who gets stuck watching Tiger King on her little mac book?

I am well aware these are super privileged complaints. Thousands of people are sick and dying, and I’m complaining about how to enjoy Netflix. I had to venture out to the pharmacy last week, because allergy season has begun and I had no meds. In lieu of a mask I wrapped a wool scarf around my face for protection, which, while being hot and itchy, also made me sneeze, guess I must be allergic. All in all though, we are doing very well in my house. I like staying home, reading, watching tv, and playing games. We stocked up on groceries and are staying full, I am getting weary of the eventuality when I run out of onions and cheese though. For any home cooks, this is a fun time to try out some new foods. I made tortilla chips from corn tortillas, and they are so freakin good! Humblebrag much bitch? Being out of the house 5 days a week for 10 – 11 hours a day I don’t cook sumptuous meals as often as I would like, so you best bet I’m getting my bake and cook on.

I’m also getting my trash tv on, thanks Netflix. Love is Blind is like The Bachelor (which I’ve never seen) was total brain candy. I binged that show in 2 days, Lauren and Cameron forever! Tiger King is a white trash dumpster fire wet dream. Every single person on that show is a complete trash bag, and Carole Baskin definitely killed her husband. Oh and You, the ultimate pseudo-romantic stalker show. I even caught the boyfriend surreptitiously watching while it streamed. Imagine the creepy stalker elements of Twilight, combined with the murderous tendencies of Fatal Attraction, wrapped up on one sexy package. Joe Goldberg is your classic anti-hero, you find yourself justifying what he does, wrapping yourself up in a tangled web of lies and moral relativism. I weep for all the teen girls of the world who get fooled into thinking this is romantic.

So I have my health, I have my books, my trash tv, and above all, I have my beer – for now. Unless LA goes the way of PA and attempts to close liquor stores. This week’s offering is actually a bottle I had purchased months ago and never reviewed. Oh, you bet it’s a sour, I present for your reading pleasure: Billie Cantaloupe Gose from Lucky Luke Brewing Company.

Located on the north side of the Los Angeles National Forest in Palmdale CA (an hour north of LA but they actually get snow), this is one I can probably drive to without much fuss. Of course, a one hour drive during the era of COVID is at least 2 during non-plague times. Luke’s is the youngest of all the breweries I’ve reviewed so far, practically an infant, established in 2015. Luke’s is run by a husband and wife team (pretty cool), and founded in a garage (like every other brewery.) I won’t bore all three of my readers with the mechanics of what makes a gose. I already wrote about the beer’s interesting (to me anyway) German roots when I reviewed Anderson Valley’s cherry gose. So buckle up buttercups for another fruit gose, bottoms up!

Check out the accompanying picture, just look at that delicate straw hue. It reminds me of the morning sunlight yellow of my first batch of homemade hard cider (another thing that SoCal is sorely lacking.) Maybe it’s the social isolation starting to get to me, but I swear that beer was talking to me. No seriously, the ivory-colored, porous dish soap head audibly bubbled with the force of a thousand Snap, Crackle, and Pops. That gose head told me all the secrets of the universe in its brief, but audible life span. Sour beers of all sorts isn’t a beverage that needs a rich, creamy head, it would probably mar the beer, to be honest. Bring on the bubbles though! You probably can’t see it from the picture, but carbonation bubbles were shooting all around the glass the entire time I was drinking, rock on. And speaking of the glass, after drinking Billie, poor Frogtown was killed in a freak and tragic dishwashing incident. Hats off to the only brewery glass I didn’t steal. RIP little frogman.

Billie smells great, by the way. I like acidic things, so of course, I would think so. This beer just emanates that gosey lactic smell you so desire. I picked up notes of melon, not cantaloupe specifically. More like honeydew cantaloupe blend, raspberry, and for a fun surprise – apple. If this had been presented to me as a sour cider (if such a thing exists, I need to get my hands on it), I’d be all over it. You would think melon and berry might not be a great combination, but it is akin to a great perfume, everything blends together.

I swear I even picked up a salt wave, like that salinated overtone that just hangs in the air at the seashore. The liquid itself has a very thin and smooth mouthfeel, par for the course of a gose. But the vivacious carbonation provides a bit of thickening as your swallow. I like this sensation, as I am not often a fan of beer that is thick with malt due to the accompanying cloying sweetness. The bubbles give some nice texture without altering the flavor of the beer.

Based on the acidity I was picking up while smelling the beer, I had a pretty good idea of how sour this beer could be. So, of course, I stuck the tip of my tongue in the glass like a four-year-old, and ho boy did it tingle! Imagine tonguing a warhead for a few seconds, that was basically the sensation. Don’t be scared off by this, I beg you. Putting the tip of your tongue in any food will concentrate the flavors to an extreme degree, I just do this stuff because I’m a giant immature weirdo. So obviously I took several real sips to really spread the flavor around my mouth. I was able to pick up traces of pickled watermelon and cantaloupe, with some Meyer lemon sweetness sprinkled about as well. I could do with a wee bit more of melon, but again this is a gose so I will enjoy it flavored or not.

This beer is sour for sure, more so than some other gose’s I’ve had, but I put that quality as a plus in my book. The heavy sourness was balanced out by notes of salt. I really like salt and acid together. My favorite potato chip is salt and vinegar, yet another thing that is sorely lacking in SoCal. And I was scarfing those chips years before developing a craft beer habit.

Dammit now I want some chips. (Immediately after the completion of this article, the author may have purchased Cheeto puffs with a scarf wrapped around her face, as LA now has a mandatory mask order.)

I mentioned before that I enjoyed the thickness given to the beer by the copious bubbles, a result of carbonation instead of malt heaviness. My malt detectors picked up little to no maltiness in this beer. Maybe, maybe you can make the argument for a wee bit of cracker flavor, but that would be a stretch. For a gose beer like this, even a dry toasted malt taste isn’t missed.

Overall this is great, nice classic gose flavor. I’d recommend picking up one to try, but seeing as Palmdale is in the middle of nowhere, it may be hard to find. Even the beer advocate page for Billie only had two submissions. Anyway, stay healthy and safe, and enjoy all the trash tv the quarantine has to offer. I know I am.

4 out of 5 pickled watermelon rinds