Gose-Zilla

Cooking dinner on a Tuesday evening, I delved into Gose-Zilla, a 4.7% salty sour from Northern Maverick Brewing Co. in Toronto. Sold in 500mL bottles featuring NM's polar bear mascot in an I ️ Tokyo shirt, the beer was dull gold and poured with a blanket of white head.

My nose caught a lot of subtle notes in this beer. While primarily sour and briny, I also noticed tart strawberry and cherry elements. As for flavour, this beer was way less tart than I expected, and displayed very little of a gose's characteristic salinity. While the flavour wasn't strictly up to style, I did enjoy notes of ripening fruit--berry and cherry again--as well as a sharp, quick finish that quenched my thirst admirably.

 

 

While not a strong exemplar of a gose, Gose-Zila still managed to be a pretty tasty little brew. Heightened tartness and a more detectable salt presence would have helped this ale. Still, for a very young brewery attempting a pretty finicky style, I think this stuff was pretty well executed and it's likely to improve in the future.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10.