Sour – Fruited Gose – The Tap Takeover

Beer Review: Sixpoint Brewing’s Super Raspy

Name: Super Raspy
Brewing Company: Six Point Brewing Company
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Style: Sour – Fruited Gose
ABV: 8.3%

The Brooklyn-based brewery known for hop-forward beers crafts a tasty, tart, fruited German-inspired ale.

From Sixpoint Brewing’s landing page for the beer:

A lush, juicy burst of tart raspberry blitzes the tastebuds –like an ELECTRIC BLAST OF BERRY FLAVOR and aroma! In Super Raspy, loads of raspberries and a touch of milk sugar have their powers combined for a mouthwatering, super tasty brew.

Sixpoint is one of the great, historical northeast craft breweries. They were one of the foundational Brooklyn craft breweries. Founded 2004, they’ve been crafting hop aggressive beers which were immediately recognizable for their thinner cans. In other words, the potent hop nature, strong branding, and unique cans helped the brewery to stand out from other beers on the shelves. Fast forward to 2018 and Sixpoint was acquired by Artisanal Brewing Ventures, the family office-backed holding company formed in early 2016 via the merger of Victory Brewing and Southern Tier. Sixpoint has mostly stuck to their core beers from what I’ve seen, but the last year or two more experimental, or rather beers outside their core brews, seemed to emerge. Super Raspy is one of those beers,

Outisde of their Core beers, Sixpoint has been brewing and distributing beers in what they call the “Infinite Loop” series, which is where this beer sits in their portfolio, which is where this beer sits in Sixpoint’s line-up. What we have here is a beer that amounts to an imperial Gose. What makes it imperial? The ABV at 8.3%, whereas a Gose will typically be floating under 5%. Like many modern Goses, or interpretation of the Gose style, Sixpoint made this beer with fruit, specifically Raspberry.

There’s a tangy funky aroma to the beer, which I’ve come to expect from the Gose style. Raspberry is the most potent element of this beer on the first sip, including the tartness associated with the fruit. The funk that typically crosses my palate in a Gose is present in Super Raspy.

Where this differs from many other Goses I’ve had, especially the more traditional take on the style, is the addition of lactose, or milk sugar, which seems to be one of the most popular adjuncts in brewing. Thankfully, lagers are about the only style where I haven’t seen Lactose added. As for Super Raspy, the “touch of” lactose is a nice sweet counterbalance to the tartness of the Gose style as well as the tartness of the raspberries.

As the picture might suggest, I enjoyed this beer on a hot day next to my pool which was an ideal way to enjoy this refreshing ale.

Recommended, link to 4 bottle cap untappd rating check in.

Beer Review: Last Wave Brewing’s Dawn Patrol

Beer Review

Name: Dawn Patrol
Brewing Company: Last Wave Brewing Co.
Location: Point Pleasant Beach, NJ
Style: Sour – Fruited Gose
ABV: 5.2%

“A brewery in one of NJ’s great Shore Town has a take on a classic German style that is sure to please.”

From Last Wave’s “Our beers” page:

Sunsets are kind of a West Coast thing. We look for the Sunrise on the East Coast, signaling another day. This beer honors those that forgo a little extra sleep to chase their passion and rise with the sun. Dawn Patrol is a light, tart beer that gets its flavor from a simple grain bill, a light souring, pureed pink guava, and like most great things from the Jersey Shore—a touch of salt. It’s a refreshing brew that’s fruity, a little funky, and ready to go for your next summer get-together—no matter the time of day.

I’ve been wanting to try one of Last Wave’s beers for a while now, especially since I’ve been seeing their beer in distribution in my area. Well, let me revise that statement. I’ve had a beer which was a collaboration with Icarus Brewing, so I wanted to sample their “solo” brewing efforts. Warm weather is a good time for fruited Goses so here we are with Dawn Patrol. Last Wave is based on one of NJ’s great Shore Towns, Point Pleasant Beach, so many of their beers (like this one) have a beach/ocean themed name.

”But what about the beer, Rob?” readers typically ask at this point. Let’s dive into it, then.

The beer pours quite cloudy, which is largely on par for the course with Gose beers. Not much color from the guava, maybe a very slight tint of pink? The aroma is a little funky, which is to be expected from the style. So far, so good.

My first impression of the taste is a little tart, a little sweetness, a slight hit from the salt on the finish. Again, pretty much in line for the style. The sweetness, of course, comes from the Guava and is a nice balance to the inherent tartness of the style. The guava isn’t too overpowering, it brings a welcome element of refreshment to the beer. I’ve got fond memories of freshly squeezed guava juice from when my wife and I spent our honeymoon in Hawaii and the guava elements in this beer definitely stoke the flames of those memories.

One of the characteristics of a Gose, compared to many other sours and fruited sours in particular, is the salinity. The Gose style of beer originated in Leipzig, Germany, a region noted for water high in salinity. As such, brewers have tried to evoke that salty/balanced finish when crafting beer in the Gose-style. That saltines is present here in Dawn Patrol and of course evokes the saltiness one might feel and taste in the air on the beach, so on many levels, Last Wave has done something quite nice with this beer.

While I thoroughly enjoy this beer and can imagine it being perfect on a warm day, I think I would like Dawn Patrol even more if the hallmark elements of the beer and style would be a little more assertive. A slight increase of the tartness and salty finish would elevate a very good beer to a great beer. Like I said, I’m nit-picking because I like the beer quite a lot. This beer is be perfect for drinkers who may be averse to sour styles because of the approachability and overall flavor profile of Dawn Patrol has the elements of the style, but not to amped up monstrous levels. In other words, I’d say this is a “successful” beer for Last Wave Brewing Co.

I’m not sure how widely Last Wave is distributing within New Jersey, but I suspect one would only have success finding this beer within the Garden State. What Dawn Patrol has done for me is this: I’m intrigued to try more beer from Last Wave Brewing.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4-bottle cap rating.

Pucker Up (Level 21)

A Sour beer on Untappd is any beer with a style of the following: American Wild Ale, Lambic, or Sour.

Right about now you’re feeling your face tighten and your taste buds explode. The full pucker is quickly setting in and you can’t get enough. This is the wonder of the sour.

Beer Review: Brix City Brewing’s Fruitastic Voyage: Mango, Orange, Peach

Beer Review

Name: Fruitastic Voyage: Mango, Orange, Peach
Brewing Company: Brix City Brewing
Location: Little Ferry, NJ
Style: Sour – Fruited Gose
ABV: 6.5%

A tart ale bursting with stone fruit flavors, a delightful American interpretation of a German classic.

From the untappd entry for beer:

Our heavily fruited, lightly salted, Gose returns! Fruitastic Voyage is brewed with Lactose and a touch of Fleur de Sel before being conditioned on double the amount of fruit as our Acid Blend series. For this newest batch, we conditioned this beer on an absurd amount of Mango Purée+Orange Purée+Peach Purée for a refreshing, over-the-top, fruit forward drinking experience. Come along and ride on a fruitastic voyage! // Lightly tart with notes of soft fleshy peaches, ripe mango, yellow Starbursts, and balancing salt.

Brix City in Little Ferry, NJ has gained a reputation over their last five years of being in business for brewing flavorful, fruited sour ales and Hazy IPAs. When I visited the brewery (on my Birthday in November) it was sunny and unseasonably warm in the 70s or 80s. When I saw this Gose on draft, I was very happy because the style is a great warm weather beer for enjoying outside with friends, which just so happened to describe the day exactly.

When the beer arrived, I wouldn’t have immediately pegged the beer as a Gose, it looked like an extremely hazy IPA or an unfiltered beer. When I passed the beer in front of my nose, I smelled some funk and fruit aromas from the beer, which disabused my initial notion that this is an IPA.

The first sip tells me I made the correct decision to start the day with this beer. Huge fruit flavors assert themselves off the bat. Mango is one of my favorite fruits and Mango, in my taste buds, seems to be the most dominant of the three fruits. The peach is also prominent as well, but the two stone fruits complement each other very nicely any time they are paired together. The orange is subtle, but the acidic nature of that fruit, I think, brings a good balance to the sweet mango and peach.

In the description above, Fleur de Sel is called out as a brewing component, which sounds very fancy. I only just discovered that Fleur de Sel is salt and while I don’t get the level of salinity in this beer that I’ve tasted in other Gose/Gose-style ales, I think the salt is another additional balance on the fruit. Which makes Fruitastic Voyage almost a reverse Gose since salinity in the traditional Gose as brewed in Leipzig Germany is a natural component of the region’s water. Here the salt is added and I’m going to guess it was added so that the extremely copious levels of fruit in the beer are balanced and not cloying..

However the folks at Brix City achieved the end product that is this beer, it was successful. This version of Fruitastic Voyage with Mango, Orange, and Peach, is a knockout of a beer. I’d call it a Gose turned up to eleven and since this is a series of beers, I’ll definitely be seeking out the other fruited variants of this beer. The only other thing I’ll note about this beer is the ABV at 6.5% is a little higher than most Gose I’ve had which have largely been below 5% ABV. Not a negative point against the beer, just worth noting that it follows the theme of Brix hewing to their own path while also brewing an old world style.

I’ve only had 5 total beers from Brix over the years so based on this beer (and the Get Puft IPA I had during my visit), I really need to seek out their beers more often. Fortunately, their beers are often in the refrigerator at the liquor stores near me.

Highly recommended, link to 4.25 bottle-cap Untappd check-in

Untapped badges earned with this beer:

What Gose Round (Level 6)