Style: Fruit sours (kettle sour / gose)
Brewery: Gotlands Bryggeri
Origin: Sweden
Size: 33cl
Alcohol: 4.6% – 4.9%
Price: 27kr
Systembolaget: 38930
I was lucky enough to receive this series of beers to have in the tasting from Spendrups, who own Wisby Bryggeri. Best known for “Bulldog” series of beers, Gotland based Wisby Bryggeri has been a mainstay in the Swedish beer scene for well over a decade. I was really interested in this newly released series, and I actually held them as a surprise to the guests on the night, which was a lot of fun.
The first of the three to be tasting was the lemon and elderflower kettle sour. This was light golden in colour with a slight haze and a head that disappeared rather quickly. With light citrus aromas and flavours, this was easy to drink with a short sour aftertaste. I thought it was actually a little light and would have liked a bit more bite to be honest. This wasn’t bad, but maybe a bit one dimensional.
The next beer we tasted was the spruce tip gose. Personally, I thought this was the worst of the trio, with the spruce notes nearly invisible and instead replaced with a light lime acidity. It was easy to drink and had nothing in particular wrong with it, it was (dare I say it) just rather boring. It would have been a lot more interesting if the spruce notes had been expressed a lot more, but as it is, it didn’t do what it said it would do on the label.
Last but by no means least was the raspberry kettle sour. With a light pink colouring, this looked really attractive. A light body and fluffy yet short head finished off the look of this beer. The aroma was, as expected,light unripe raspberries and this followed through to give a refreshing red fruit hit to the palate. This fruit note lingered, refreshing the mouth with the acidity. After the first two beers, this was clearly the best of the bunch.
As always, it’s fun to try multiple beers from the same series all at once. The winner of these three though was easy, with the raspberry kettle sour a head above the other two. I think I could enjoy all three of these in the warm summer months, but if I had the choice, I would go for the raspberry every time.