20 April 2016 - Best Beer HQ
Funk Estate Gose Town sour ale review
Mrs BestBeerHQ and I recently stopped in at The Lumsden Freehouse in Newmarket, Auckland, for a cheeky beer in the sunshine. While there, I had only my third ever sour beer – the delightfully named Gose Town sour ale by Funk Estate.
I’ve imbibed a couple of Funk Estate craft beers before – the Yes Yes Y’all session pale ale, and the Oh Lordy NZ pale ale – but they didn’t exactly blow me away or anything. In fact, I’d struggle to remember anything about them beside their crazy-cool labels if I hadn’t reviewed them for this beer blog.
Now let’s see if this beer is ghostly or ghastly, weather it’ll haunt me later or if I’ll never want to leave Gose Town.
ABV: 4.5%
Blurb about the beer: Gose Town is a light, tart, kettle soured ale, with a touch of salt and coriander added in the boil. Based on the traditional German style, this easy-drinking sour ale is bit of a crowd-pleaser, especially in the warmer months.
Tastes like: A breath of fresh air.
While gose is hardly my favourite style of beer, it’s very encouraging to see so many sour beers popping up in New Zealand these days. Variety is the spice of life, as they say, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to try something new on this sunny Auckland day.
Gose Town isn’t like the other sours I’ve reviewed before on this blog – it’s saltier and obviously much more beer-like than the Good George blueberry sour, and it’s spicier than I remember 8 Wired’s Hippy Berliner cucumber sour ever being. It’s going down a treat with the free popcorn that The Lumsden serves.
This beer is crisp, clear and full of flavour. However, I’m a fan of coriander/cilantro; if you’re a part of the very vocal crowd who doesn’t, you might want to give this beer a wide berth. You have been warned.
So is it the best beer ever? It was fun to try something new, but I’m not sure I’d seek this one out again. It’s bold and infinitely drinkable, but perhaps it just gets a little bit one-dimensional after a while. Still, my hat goes off to the Funk Estate team for bringing a taste of Europe to these shores.
Feel free to let me know what you think of this beer in the comments section below.
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[…] out my previous Fun Estate beer reviews – Gose Town, Yes Yes Y’all, and Oh […]