Breakside + Fat Head's Juggling Plums Gose

To kick off 2015, we have a draft-only collaboration brewed with our good friends at Fat Heads Brewery. The beer, a Gose, is a slightly sour wheat beer made with salt and coriander. In a non-traditional twist, we derived all of the salt in this beer from an unlikely source; the Japanese Salt Plum or Umeboshi. Salt plums are small Japanese plums that have been cured with red Shiso and salt and spend a year “fermenting” in wooden barrels. The fruit is intensely briny, with a light sweetness and herbaceousness. Seriously though, these things pack a punch: we need fewer than 5 lbs of salt plums to impart a recognizable (yet balanced!) flavor to 1,000 gallons of beer! In the spirit of collaboration, we brewed components of this beer at each of our breweries; Fat Head’s grew up the sour wort we used to give the beer it’s tartness, while Breakside supplied the base wort and salt plums. We think that you’ll find the finished beer to be incredibly refreshing and complex. It’s a “gateway sour” with a moderate body and slightly spicy finish.