Craig Bartlett
The brewers who collaborated to make this year's Common Thread.
The gose (gose-uh) will be this year’s Common Thread, a collaboratively brewed beer that’s come to symbolize Madison Craft Beer Week. It’s the fifth year that brewers from around the state, a majority from southern Wisconsin, come together to develop a different recipe and make a beer that gets showcased during the 10-day annual event. Common Thread reflects how brewers who normally compete for shelf space and bar tap lines can come together and make a beer. In 2015, Common Thread was a Belgian tripel that was designed by a group of Wisconsin’s woman brewers.
The selection of a gose for 2016 calls attention to a style that’s gaining in popularity. It’s an old style of beer, somewhat overlooked. It originated along the river Gose, which flows through the town of Goslar in the German state of Lower Saxony.
Traditional versions are quite sour and salty. The saltiness in particular likely came from the naturally saline, mineral-rich water from around Goslar and Leipzig that was used for brewing. The style is similar to a hefeweizen, in that it's made with high amounts of malted wheat. It has very low hop bitterness. However, this beer can have some dryness and spice from additions of coriander and salt. The gose is commonly fermented with both yeast and lactobacillus, and will range in alcohol from 4% to 5% ABV.
Gose is not a beer that's found or made regularly around the U.S., but that’s changing. “It is kind of an exotic style, and it shows our collective ability to cover a wide range of beer types under the Common Thread banner,” says Wisconsin Brewing’s brewmaster Kirby Nelson.
Along with Nelson, Vintage Brewing brewmaster Scott Manning will be among the brewing corps that’ll make this year’s Common Thread. Manning says one of the challenges will be using a kettle-souring process to make the beer. Kettle souring involves initially cooking the grains and then stopping the heating process, adding in lactobacillus and sealing the brew kettle to allow the mixture to sit for one to two days until the bacteria imparts a sourness. Then the brew kettle is restarted to kill the bacteria and finish making wort. “This stands to be a multi-day souring procedure,” says Manning.
A number of Wisconsin brewers have been tinkering with lactobacillus and kettle souring their beers. Manning himself created one last summer called Berliner Geist.
Like last year, Wisconsin Brewing Company (WBC) in Verona is the brewing host. Manning says scaling things up on WBC’s brewing system is a welcome challenge for brewers. “I can only imagine how difficult it is to fit something goofy like kettle-souring, which occupies the brewhouse for days, into Wisconsin Brewing’s busy production schedule,” says Manning. The initial brew took place March 17, with the restart of the kettle expected around three days later. The beer will appear throughout Madison on draft during Craft Beer Week, April 29-May 8, 2016. Proceeds from the sales of Common Thread go to the Wisconsin Brewers Guild and are used for beer education and industry awareness.
