How To Brew a BLT Gose

Me juicing Tomatillos at Breakside Brewery

There has been a homebrew idea on my mind for a while now; well, maybe more like a dream than a concrete idea. The style of Gose has gotten more attention in the last 3 years than it probably has in its previous few centuries of existence. Cascade Brewing was quick to use the flexibility and uniqueness of the style by molding it in different ways, while Upright Brewing took a more classic approach. More recently Widmer tweaked the style with a Rasberry Hibiscus version for last year's Portland Fruit Beer Festival, and it was so popular it is due to become a bottled beer soon. Even more recently, Breakside Brewery produced a more traditional take but offered it with a variety of flavored syrups, Berliner-Weisse style, with unique flavors like bloody mary mix. With my birthday coming up, my friend Ben Edmunds, the Head Brewer at Breakside Brewery and New School contributor, offered to let me brew a beer of my choice at Breakside. Thus, the opportunity arose to make my version of a Gose.

Processing Tomatillo's in a juicer

For those who don't know, Gose is an obscure German-style wheat beer brewed to a very low gravity and spiced with coriander and salt. It is light, bready, and citrusy with a very light tartness and a hint of salt that adds to the mouthfeel. It seemed like a perfect fit for acidic tomato and salty bacon.

a pitcher of juiced Tomatillo

I am a longtime fan of Bloody Marys. I love the malleability of the mix; the spice, the acidity, and the complexity of a great mix are tough to beat. So much am I a fan that I created an elaborate mix back in my earlier bartending days that was so detailed it made into a recent book on Bloody Marys. So for a while I have wanted to include tomatoes and spice in a beer. Stoudt's has done it with a Bloody Mary beer that tasted more bloody than beer, and I had mixed feelings about it. I love a more citrusy bloody with fresh lemon and lime juice, so while thinking over the best beer style to meld for these special ingredients, the Gose popped into my mind.

I wanted to use fresh tomatoes in the beer, but Breakside Head Brewer Ben Edmunds was not a fan after recently using them in a collaboration beer with Burnside Brewing. Instead, we decided to use acidic, salty, and thick tomatillos. After the beer had already fermented out we hand juiced about 10lbs of Tomatillos, only leaving the thick sauce we extracted. By itself it was quite tasty, and we added it to the fermenter directly as the beer was pumped over to the bright tank.

The Brew sheet

I wanted the beer to be slightly tart. I love a good Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwich, but I always add mustard to mine. I wanted to get some of that same flavor, and Goses are commonly acidic from either the addition of a Lactobacillus culture or a sour mash. We decided to try a sour mash, by leaving 30% of the malt bill in the mash tun in room temperature water overnight. There is naturally Lacto and other cultures living on the barley, and warmer water allows them to begin to develop. When we arrived at the brewhouse the next morning to begin the brewday you could smell the funky tart culture developing and even see it forming in white swirls on the top of the mash.

Ben Edmunds slicing up fresh lemongrass

To accentuate that slight tartness and to get the "L" for my BLT we decided to add Lemongrass.
The grassy, lemony spice had been used very effectively in Upright Brewing's Reggae Junkie Gruit for a tart/sweet lemony flavor, so I thought it would be the perfect addition here. Not to mention Gose traditionally uses coriander, which also imparts a bit of lemon character, so I figured lemongrass would be the perfect replacement.

 

The key ingredient that makes a Gose unique, though, is salt. This was the basis for the entire idea and the "B" of my BLT Gose. You might be thinking that salt does not start with a "B"; you are correct, and what I wanted to use is a product you may have seen called Bacon Salt. 

However after researching Bacon Salt, it seems to be just flavored salt,  so instead we decided to purchase a tasty sea salt and "SNOB" Ritch, ever the BBQ'er, would hand smoke it with hickory wood for a distinct bacony flavor.

In the photo above you can see the salt before smoking on the left and after smoking on the right. It was clumped together and had a nice, pinkish and brown bacon color afterwards. If you opened the top of that jar, an incredibly potent smoked bacon aroma wafted out that you could smell across an entire room.

We added the salt to primary fermentation in about the same amount that Ben added to Breakside's regular Gose from awhile back. When the beer fermented out and I went to check on it and add the Tomatillo this past Monday, you could certainly taste the salt, mostly from the mouthfeel, but not distinctly smoky. We decided to nearly double the salt addition and let it sit for a few days. The finished beer has a light and very wheaty, bready body and flavor, along with a slight zing of lemony tartness and a creamy and salty flavor with hints of a savory quality. I wouldn't say it tastes like a BLT, but it will make an excellent pairing with a sandwich, and it's vegetarian to boot!

It goes on tap this Friday 2/10 night at Breakside Brewery (8th and NE Dekum) for my birthday, and the brewery will be serving a BLT sandwich special to pair it up. It should be on tap for a while if you cannot make it in Friday!