There Gose Anderson Valley

What up party people! I had my first beer in a week today because I have been playing the: coronavirus or bad cold game since last Tuesday. This fucking virus is getting more news coverage than Trump’s latest horrible tweet, and that just ain’t right. I finally took a day off from work because it felt like I had swallowed a porcupine, which suspiciously fell on a Friday. I was frantically texting with Nerdy to see if calling on the last day of the workweek would look unfavorable. I get like six sick days a year, so I’m gonna fucking use them. We’ll leave the discussion of how abhorrent American companies behave concerning paid leave for another time.

Now out here in Los Angeles, we are getting copious amounts of news alerts about the damn virus, you would think it’s like the damn Black Death out here. “Bring out your dead,” plague doctors running around with those creepy avian-esque, herb-filled masks, decay everywhere, etc. LA County has 20 confirmed cases, out of 10 million residents – that’s .00020% of the population. But, as anyone who has seen any disaster movie ever, knows that LA and NYC are the battleground cities. I’ll either be dead in the first wave pandemic or fighting off crazed half mutants Thunderdome style. Major disasters don’t happen on farms in Iowa or any other coastal city for that matter.

For this week’s offering, we are heading north to Boonville, CA. Unlike a lot of the breweries reviewed so far, Anderson Valley is nearly as old as I (oh the horror). AV was founded in 1987 in Boonville CA in the basement of Buckhorn Saloon, I’m definitely vibing the old west vibe. The brewery grew quickly from ten barrels to the 100 they boast today, that’s nearly 2,600 gallons- hope you’re thirsty. AV also takes the honor of having the country’s first disc golf course at a brewery. Hmm, no thanks. Boonville’s lush redwood forests (seriously look at a map of NorCal, it’s all greenery…sigh), and rich Native American history, is more interesting to me. I can drive there in…oh only 7 hours! AV is definitely riding the sustainability train though, with solar panels providing nearly half their electricity, wastewater used to water hop fields, and spent grain used to feed local cows. Moovelous.

So this is not my first Anderson Valley beer. I had randomly picked up the Blood Orange Gose, and it was quite good, so I felt comfortable selecting the Cherry Gose. As Nerdy knows, I love sours (and she hates them.). Now, what is Gose, and how is it distinct from another type of sour? Gose is a warm fermenting beer that originating in Goslar, Germany. It is brewed with at least 50% of the grain bill being malted wheat. Dominant flavors in gose include sourness, a herbal component (usually coriander), and a strong salty/briny flavor. Some breweries get all fancy pants and use saltwater in the brewing process. Gose beers typically do not have prominent hop bitterness, flavors, or aroma, and a low to moderate ABV.

Wikipedia tells me Germans of yesteryear would patronize numerous Gosenschänken (gose taverns) when they craved that boozy briny beverage. This is a word I NEED to start using in everyday life. ‘Oh, see you later, honey, I’m off to the Gosenschänken!’ German’s genuinely do have words for everything. I don’t even need to specify what sort of beer I plan on imbibing; the word already exists!

Some other highly relevant German words:

Treppenwitz: the word literally means “staircase joke,” as in you don’t think of the retort until you’re on the stairs, leaving the scene. I’ve had many scenarios play out in my brain where I am the oratorical hero, winning loquacious battles of wit over some common nitwit. If only.

Gemütlichkeit: cozy on HGH. It’s being on a soft couch. Under a warm blanket. Surrounded by family. With a cup of hot chocolate in your hands. And maybe a knit cap on your head. It’s the whole experience and feeling that you have of being physically warm, but also metaphorically feeling warm inside your heart.

Kummerspeck: grief bacon. Excess weight gained from emotional eating. This one hits close to home; I eat a lot of feelings.

Originally, gose was spontaneously fermented: “Die Gose stellt sich selber ohne Zutuung Hefe oder Gest” (“Gose ferments itself without the addition of yeast”).

Gose was delivered, still actively fermenting, in casks to the Schänken (beer house). The gose casks were left in the cellar with the tap bung closed, but the shive hole left open, allowing small amounts of CO2 to escape. That CO2, when fermentation had slowed to a point where no CO2 was emerging, the gose was ready to bottle. The barrel was emptied into a tank, whence it was filled into traditional long-necked bottles. These were not closed with a cap or cork, but with a plug of yeast, which naturally rose up the neck as the secondary fermentation continued.

Reviewing the Cherry Gose seemed like a job for my Frogtown Brewery Glass. So slim, so sleek, perfect for exhibiting a sour delight. So let’s get to it, to it, to it….(shameless reference to the Lonely Island’s “Jack Sparrow” with special guest Michael Bolton. A fan favorite in my house.) Watch it, Nerd Girl, it’s good.

While pouring the gose, I could tell this was going to be one highly carbonated beer. I could see the bubbles shooting up from the bottom of the non-laser etched glass. My trypophobia briefly set in as I observed the bubbles collecting in round groupings on the side of the glass. For those of you who are lucky enough never to have heard of this particular phobia, don’t Google it. It’s one of those irrational and fucking gross phobias. I noticed about one fat finger’s worth of head, mayhap there was soap residue on my glass because I read that others received higher amounts. The head was snowy white, with the sudsy consistency of dish soap. And like dish soap, the large bubbles popped and audibly fizzled away quickly.

As we all know after the head comes the waft. To be honest, this beer doesn’t have a strong aroma. I did pick up notes of cherry and grape, with a sour lactic undertone. If I smelled this liquid and was told it
was some mixed berry flavor of wine cooler, I’d believe them. But we don’t judge a book by its cover, and we can’t always discern a great or poor beer by smell. Some sours are quite pungent and noticeable, like a Flanders Duchess de Bourgenone, and some are much milder like a Belgian spiced Saison. While the smells may be underwhelming for some (I expected more, but I’m not disappointed), the appearance certainly is not. The gose is a beautiful hazy golden apricot hue. The more I studied the glass, the more enchanted I became with the color. The sunlight from my kitchen window hit the glass just right, and the gose began to emit a glowing rose gold ray. Gorgeous.

Now I’ve never really given much thought to whether I actually like the mouthfeel of a beer. I usually just think ok thin, thick, whatever. But for maybe the first time, I registered the mouthfeel of this beer being quite pleasing. The liquid itself is thin, but the vivacious bubbling provided a medium thickness boost. As I swallowed, I felt like my throat was coated in a pleasing, creamy satin. Not a description you expected from a sour, huh!

Now taste-wise, we will just have to get this (for you hopheads) uncomfortable fact out of the way: there is absolutely no discernable hoppiness. There are hops in the beer, usually added during the boil. But any bitterness is overpowered completely by the sharp lactic tang.
For connoisseurs like me, this is a plus. I prefer, nay, demand my sweet fruit flavors with a side of sour. I don’t eat a lot of sweets, but when I do, it’s got some tang: sour gummy worms, key lime pie, and blue raspberry ICEEs. So, imagine my delight when I taste this gose, and the first thing that comes to mind is a piece of sour cherry pie, cold and crisp right out of the refrigerator.

Actually, strike that. Sour cherry pie minus the crust, cold and tangy right out of the refrigerator.

No toasted malt notes here, this is a gose, there shouldn’t be any biscuit notes. I love Sam Adam’s Cherry Wheat as much as the next girl, but this is a gose – big-league beer. If you can’t handle the mouth-puckering stone fruited goodness, then step out of line ladies.

I enjoyed Anderson’s Blood Orange gose as well, this brewery does a gose right. Both beers contain that quintessential briny, ocean flavor that complements the sour so well. I live near K Town, so my local shops are filled with Korean delights like dried salted cherries and plums. I’d liken the cherry gose to that sort of treat- sweet, salty, and tangy. Not for the faint of heart or palette, dare I say exotic even? Tell someone you enjoy German beers, and their mind automatically jumps to hefeweizen or a cromulent bock. I enjoy those too! Except for doppelbocks, I’ll see you in hell. So take a chance and try this or any of Anderson Valley’s tasty sours. You won’t be disappointed, I guarantee it.

4 out of 5 cherry pits.