Dean’s Base Gose.

Here is Dean Volungis’s Gose recipe, which is a slight variation on the Milk The Funk Gose recipe. Extract brewers can swap out the grains for Wheat DME. Dean likes to use a blend of lacto strains to help give a wider temperature range for kettle souring and a more rounded sourness. He has been using one Goodbelly Oat Shot and two Garden of Life probiotic pills which gives about 10 lacto strains at a 60 billion CFU pitch rate and tends to sour to Dean’s desired level in about 24 hours. Pre-acidifying the wort to 4.5 pH before pitching the lactobacillus will help prevent protein degradation and help keep a good head on the beer.

This recipe won silver in Historical Beer in this summer’s BeeHive Brewoff and might have been the best of show beer from the Sludge Puppy comp (though we haven’t seen those results yet). Dean likes to use .5 oz good sea salt and .66 oz Indian coriander for some subtle citrus and fragrant notes and just enough salinity to accentuate the flavors without being noticeable. The beer is an easy drinking 4% ABV summer beer on its own, but also makes a great sour base beer for fruit additions. An easy way to add vibrant fruit flavor is to keg carbonate with 100% fruit juice using the sugar content on the nutrition label to calculate appropriate amounts (~45g per 5 gals). Dean’s favorite fruit additions are pineapple and other tropical fruits (passion fruit, guava, papaya), but other flavors can also work. He has also played around with barrel-aged versions by upping the grains to target 5.5-6% ABV. Dry-hopping with new world hops is also a fun way to play around. Feel free to play around with yeast selection as well, from WLP 644 Sacc Trois, Kolsch yeast, or a fruity Brett strain like Clausenii.