gose – Barley Prose

Drinking Away A Lousy Situation

Lousy situations call for stronger beers. You can’t combat dealing with lice with a sessionable lager–break out the good stuff.

So far it looks like we only had the initial signs of an issue, and we’ve all been doused with medication and we washed clothes and towels and all that. Still, after that sort of panic and frantic washing, you can’t get away with sipping a gose, you need something with some heft.

Bring on Terrapin’s Wake-n-Bake. Specifically Raspberry Truffle W-n-B, an imperial stout with coffee, oatmeal, cacao, and raspberry. Smooooooth. Delicious. There was almost no alcohol or stout burn to this, though it was sweet and thick and lovely. You could tell it was strong, but it was so full flavored that it was all balanced nicely. What a great stout, what a great way to unwind.

Day 2, everything seems fine but we still have to comb and check and are wary about everything. It’s still fresh on our mind. My hair still itches out of anxiety. Tequila. Tequila is definitely the way to go.

I opened up my bottle of Founders Mas Agave, an imperial gose brewed with agave, lime and sea salt. Margarita, clearly. It certainly smelled like it. I’d had a bottle of a similar beer from The Alementary a few months ago called Escape From Oaxaca which was less sweet, and more tequila-flavored than this, but this one was still fun to drink. In fact, it may have been easier to drink, even if I preferred the taste of the other one.

It’s sweet, from the agave, so if sweet isn’t your thing probably avoid both these beers. Apparently my ‘comfort beer’ tastes veer into the trope of single lady downing ice cream after a breakup. Something I think tequila would also be appropriate for, though I have been known to say tequila gose (haha) with everything.

Anyhow, this beer tasted like a margarita, but a sweeter one. One heavy on the lime juice and sweetener. I personally would’ve enjoyed more barrel aging on it, more tequila taste. This was 10% and went down easy. The salt balances the sweetness nicely, keeps it from being cloying, much like it might do in a similar margarita, but really the tequila should be the showpiece in a cocktail, or a cocktail-themed beer.

Drinking beer does not kill lice, but it sure does make a lousy situation more manageable. Until next time, because #kids, cheers!

Run, Relax, Refresh: WT Brews

This is the first in what I expect to be a series of posts with a common motif.

That theme is to write about two things that are dear to me. One of them, you might have guessed, is beer.

The other is a pursuit of mine that I feel goes hand in hand with beer, and, in the circles in which I travel, I think I’d be able to find a number of fine, sweaty folks who agree with me (no, the perspiring people I am referring to are not mob trial witnesses).

That second thing that is dear to me? Running.

However, let’s not jump to any rash conclusions. Not everyone who runs drinks beers. Delicious, craft beers, with fruit flavors and subtle hints of things. And, similarly, not everyone who drinks is a runner. In fact, I know plenty of thirsty Americans who don’t run farther than their own basement fridges.

But, and here’s the thing, if you Venn diagram’d this sumbitch, well, you’d find quite the nice intersection of runners and beer drinkers.

Why do you think this is?

Surely, running will build up a thirst in a man.
The “runner’s high,” for those of us who feel a certain euphoric bliss at the end of a strenuous period of exercise, is strikingly reminiscent of the buzz that two flavorful malts/stouts/IPAs will give a man.
Running creates a calorie deficit. If you don’t fill that hole, you could get weak and/or hurt yourself.
Beer is delicious (this is more of a universal truth)

The concept of this post, and likely subsequent ones, is to lay out a course and cover it at a brisk pace, near a local watering hole, and then follow said run with a cold brewski. In other words, the “run,” the “relax,” and the “refresh.” In that order.

Since we ramped up this little slice of bloggery, I’ve been meaning to stop at WT Brews, in Baldwinsville, New York. Like the previously reviewed Buried Acorn, it’s a tap room, a place brewing a number of local beers that I’ve yet to try.

So prior to driving over there, plotted out a very nice 3+ mile course that would start and end right at the brewery. And I ran it.

The Run:

This course actually ran by two different cemeteries, both on Tappan Street. It set me a wondering — how many people die in this little town? Perhaps I should have altered the route to go past a third cemetery, on the basis of “good things come in threes” and “deaths come in threes,” either of which would be a suitable pattern to sustain.

It was, in other respects, a delightful, if not a bit warm, typical weekday run for me. Most nights, after work, I try to get a 30 minute or so workout in at a pace that is comfortable but not taxing, and at the same time work up a good sweat. This route surely qualified.

The Relax:

The run was followed by a pop in to the aforementioned WT Brews. Forgive my piss poor photo taking skills here, but I was goofy with sweat and weakness and a lack of hoppy delights.

This tap room boasts both a number of in house products, as well as several guest taps.

This is a really enjoyable little place, hitting on a number of details that make it a sweet spot. Complimentary pretzels, a dart board, and the A/C cranked up on an 80+ degree day, to name a few.

Not to mention chairs with an abundance of assfeel.

The Refresh:

Given my predilection for fruity, tart, not-so-beery tasting beers, I naturally went with the passion fruit gose.

I can’t tell you what their brewmaster might tell you about this beer — it’s so new, it’s not even mentioned on their list of beers on their web site (though they do identify 13 other home cooked products there).

What I can tell you, though, is that this gose comes in a close second to the Brown’s Brewing Guava Gose written up here as my all time favorite beer of this style. Tons of tartness and flavor. It has “hints of yumminess” in it!

I would come back and slurp down more of these, without question.

It ended up being quite the nice capper to a weekday jaunt. I shall be back, probably to sample their blonde ale and IPA, on subsequent visits.

Oot and Aboot: Craft Beer Night at the Ballpark

(Note: Author is not Canadian; rather, he prefers the quaint mispronunciations depicted in the blog post title.)

Friday night is a low ebb for me. After the rigors of a work week, I can find the energy for only a very small amount of coordinated activity.

Plans with other adults, where I have to interact in meaningful dialogue? Uh, no. That’s not really going to work.

There are a few excursions, however, that I can summon up the mental fortitude for. One of them is a trip to the ballpark. I am blessed enough to live just 15 minutes from the home stadium of a AAA baseball team, the Syracuse Chiefs (soon to be the Syracuse Mets, at which point I am sure they will be afflicted by boils, locusts, hot fire, and other various Biblical plagues).

In an attempt to drum up attendance, in a park that consistently has lots of leg and elbow room available, a number of promotional events have been added to the schedule. New in 2018 is…

CRAFT BEER NIGHT.

Oh, yeah, that’s right.

For $20, the buyer, in this case myself, is awarded a 200 level ticket to the ballgame and two beers from a selection of 16 oz. delights, all served courtesy of a fine local tavern called Now & Later.

While the tavern itself has a dozen or so beers on tap, and several dozen more in cans and bottles, they bring a subset of these to the ballpark to be sold to thirsty baseball fans such as myself.

These beers do normally go for $10 a throw, so, essentially, the Friday ticket to the game is free with the promise of drinking two craft beers.

I CAN TOTALLY DO THAT.

(I suppose you could also look at it as the purchase of a $12 ticket to the game, and then two $10 brews discounted to just $4 each, but, somehow, in my brain, the concept of a free ticket to the game makes more sense).

I chose to partake, first, in this juicy IPA, so juicy, in fact, that the word “juicy” appears multiple times on the can.

My second choice was a Gose, the only Gose that I saw on the menu, this little number which touts itself as being derived from grapes.

These were both good, but not great, beer choices. They got the job done, is what I’m saying. I won’t delve into all of the subtle details of these particular beers because, quite honestly, they weren’t quite memorable enough for me to feel the need to do that. They were cold, and beery, and alcoholy, and went particularly well with the hot dog and deep-fried-cornbread-stuffed-with-jalapeno-cheese-and-bacon things that were also consumed that night.

Sadly, the home team couldn’t muster all that much offense, giving up four runs before we found our seats and ultimately losing 5-0.

Given all of the goodness I was soaking in, though, I didn’t mind that either, particularly.

Review: Brown’s Brewing Company Guava Gose

If I were a poet, I would say that this concoction was the color of a sunrise, at Acadia National Park in Maine on the Atlantic coast, with schooners off in the distance, and fishing boats headed out for the day, and so on and so forth.

But that ain’t me, son.

I’m a man. A thirsty man, who enjoys a beer and a sandwich.

In this case, the location of the sandwich was the very recently opened Syracuse Press Room Pub, off of Clinton Square in Syracuse. This is a very hip new restaurant and tavern filled with Syracuse themes bric-a-brac and cool tables made out of cut down portions of actual basketball flooring. And some tasty vittles. In this case, the special of the day was a chicken teriyaki sandwich, topped with booze soaked salsa (see a theme yet?) and a side of their fantastically delightful homemade potato chips.

If you’re not getting the chips at this place, well, that means you blew it. YOU BLEW IT!

So, back to the Press Room. Their web site does tout the fine list of New York breweries featured among their beer selections, including “Ommegang, Brooklyn, Middle Ages, Browns, Ithaca, LIC, Single-Cut, Thin-Man, Rohrbach, Common Roots, Lake Placid, Empire, 1911, Critz Farms, Southern Tier” and promising that the list goes on from there.

(Which explains why my beer was served in a Southern Tier pint glass, despite not being a Southern Tier product.)

Today’s beverage is a Brown’s Brewing Company product known as the Guava Gose.

A gose, for those of you not in the “knows,” is a specific kind of beer. And I had to look so that I could say something more sophisticated than “goses are so good!” Which doesn’t really help anyone.

According to the Wikipedia, a gose is “a top-fermented beer that originated in Goslar, Germany. It is brewed with at least 50% of the grain bill being malted wheat. Dominant flavours in gose include a lemon sourness, a herbal characteristic, and a strong saltiness (the result of either local water sources or added salt). Gose beers typically do not have prominent hop bitterness, flavours, or aroma. The beers typically have a moderate alcohol content of 4 to 5% ABV.”

This particular gose is brought to you by Brown’s Brewing Company. They are based out of Troy, New York, near Albany, and I have been to their taproom. I attended a wedding and reception there a few years ago, and in fact am in the proud possession of a Brown’s Brewing Company bottle opener that has served me well.

Anyhoo, the Brown’s folks have so many beers that their web site gives only very short shrift to this particular brew.

“Tart German wheat beer brewed with sea salt, coriander, and almost 400 pounds of guava puree! 4.75% ABV, 0 IBU”

That’s all you’re getting out of the Brown’s on this. So, allow me to supplement that with details.

This beer is tremendous! It is tart and sweet at the same time. It’s fruity as all get out and it’s got a wonderful aroma. I would best describe it as the by-product of a love affair between a mermaid and a fat clown that was taking a break from scaring little kids at birthday parties. Like John Wayne Gacy, if he hadn’t killed all of those people.

I’ve yet to find this one in the stores, which keeps me going back to the Press Room to enjoy them, and as long as it’s on tap there at a reasonable $6 per pint, I shall continue to return and partake.

I couldn’t even find an image of the product itself, but I think this one, shown in a Brown’s glass, is pretty close.

So head over to the Press Room, or, if you’re in the Troy area, to the brewing room, and suck down one of these bad boys. Or, you know, start stomping on the guavas yourself (writer’s note: stomping on a guava may or may not produce a delicious gose beer, when combined with several other steps and several weeks of waiting. I cannot confirm or deny this).