Spring Brews

Do you determine sourness of Gose by taste or pH?

 

My personally, or people in general? Personally, I try to take some pH readings, but in the end it's mostly a taste thing for me, largely because I'm using inaccurate pH strips and a cheap pH meter that can give wildly different results on the same sample within the course of a minute or two, so I have no idea what the actual pH is.

 

That sounds good to me. I have no pH meter, just the beer pH test strips. The final test of course is going to be how the beer tastes. I'm just wondering how the sour and salt flavor balance of the wort relates to the finished beer.

 

It's an interesting balance. I've only made two so far; my first one was lighter on the salt and I couldn't taste it at all so I upped it a bit in the second one, going half on taste and half on measurement. I ended up just north of one gram per liter of packaged beer (25g : 22.5L) - Himalayan pink salt if it makes a difference - and found that it's a bit much for my liking. Not that the beer is outright salty, but the salt is apparent to the taste buds and makes the beer linger a bit too long after each sip. Next time I'll probably try about 0.7-0.8 grams per liter - I think the key is to have salt in there at a level where it's influencing the beer's flavor profile, but you don't necessarily notice it.

Oh, and iodized salt is not recommended. I believe it messes with your yeast, which could then mess with your fermentation and flavor profile.

 

Right. Iodine is supposedly poisonous to yeast. As for taste, some salts have a more pronounced flavor than others. Pink salts usually get their color from a small amount of iron content. It may taste good on food, but iron is usually not desirable in beer. Here is a Gose recipe in BYO that uses 21g of sea salt in 5 gallons: https://byo.com/hops/item/2349-gose But they also call for 2 pounds of Acidulated malt! I don't believe I would want to use that much Acid malt, at least not in my first attempt. According to Brun Water, that would take the pH down to about 3.5.

 

For a long over due update to this post, I want to thank all who contributed recipes and suggestions. Some of those suggestions may end up on my future brew schedule.
I especially want to thank TasunkaWitko for suggesting Edelweiss, and FatDragon for suggesting (and educating me on) Gose. I did brew Edelweiss, but alas, it was tainted with an infection. I'll have to give it another try it sometime. FatDragon, I am currently drinking a Passion fruit Gose. Why Passion fruit? Because my wife requested it. This Gose is light and refreshing, with some saltiness and soft round sourness that is more of an interesting background flavor. Oh, and there is a great up front aroma of passion fruit, supporting a mild passion fruit flavor. At 4.2% Abv. (apparent), it is a real thirst quencher! Cheers! :rockin:

 

I've got a few more bottles of my passion fruit gose, which landed right around that same ABV. There's still a tropical fruit vibe to it, but it doesn't specifically taste of passion fruit anymore. I think I overdid the salt a bit too - not terribly but enough to drop it a couple points. If I were in the States I would suggest shipping a couple bottles back and forth, but shipping to and from China would be a bit much...

 

That is a long way. I'd love to visit though. How is their Brussels Beer Garden? I used to travel quite a bit, but never made it there. If I ever do though, it'd like to look you up. I think it would be great meet up with a home brewer from across the pond. Right now, My wife and I are enjoying my latest Saison. It's only 6 months old. I like my Saisons in the 6.5 - 7% abv range, and 6 - 12 months old. It smooths out the phenolics a bit. As for Gose, that yeast is amazing! I pitched it at 80F, and let it go. The fermometer stayed right at 78F, which means that at peak it was probably up to 83 -85F internally. It fermented like crazy, and I can detect absolutely no fusels or other unwanted flavors. I'm going to try that yeast again with a different recipe.

 

Name-dropping Wuhan beer establishments. Color me impressed! I know a lot of people like Brussels, but I live far across the river and haven't been there in years. When I've been there, it's been pretty much your standard China beer bar - a bunch of German and Belgian stuff and not much else. I'm sure that's changed as craft beer is taking a stronger hold in China and more craft beer is imported and brewed domestically. On my rare evenings off from husbanding and dadding, I usually wend my way to Devil's Brewery, a newer place (opened mid-late 2016) with an American brewer. If you ever do come this way, I'm sure I could make time to meet up for a beer or two.

For the gose, what yeast did you use? I've had an odd aftertaste on my two goses so far and I'm definitely interested in trying something different.

 

Wild yeast from spent grain. I had planned on stopping fermentation to limit lactic acid, but it was fermenting so well I just left it. As it turned out, it was not too acidic. It was just right and I like the fruity yeast character it leaves.

Oh, those establishments you mentioned sound interesting.

 

I forgot to mention the high fermentation temp. The fermometer read 78F thru most of the fermentation. The internal temp was probably 80-85F. The days were warm, and I just let it ride. There were no heat stress related issues that I could detect. When I pick up some more Wheat and Pilsner malt, I'll brew this again.