Typical gose beer recipes have coriander in them instead of juniper, so feel free to substitute. Another fun take is to switch out lemon rind for limes, and maybe add the juice of a couple limes in the secondary or at bottling to get a sort of "gin and tonic" effect. Bottom line when experimenting with this style of beer is that it should be light, slightly tart and a little salty -- this is a summer beer to pound down, so keep the alcohol level, IBUs and extra seasonings to a dull roar.
10gramslow alpha acid hops,like Saaz or Styrian Goldings (pellets)
20gramsjuniper berries,crushed
Peeled zest from 1 lemon
14gramssea salt
1Whirlfloc tablet(optional)
White Labs German Ale/Kolsch WL029,at room temperature
2to 3 teaspoons 88% lactic acid(optional)
Instructions
Mash the acid malt. Put the acidulated malt into a grain bag or tie it up loosely in cheesecloth and cover it with 2 quarts of water. Bring this to 150°F to 155°F over medium heat and hold it at this temperature for 30 minutes. Remove the bag and set it over the pot in a strainer. Pour 2 quarts of water heated to 170°F over it to rinse the grain. Let the bag drain for 10 minutes, then remove. Discard the grain or feed it to animals.
Start the boil. Add 3 more gallons of water to the pot and bring this to a boil. As the water heats up, stir in both extracts, making sure there are no lumps. When you reach a boil, add the hops and set the timer for 1 hour.
Add the seasonings. With 10 minutes to go, add the juniper, salt and lemon rind, plus the Whirlfloc tablet if you are using it. If you have a wort chiller, now is the time to put it in the boiling wort so it can sanitize.
Crash chill the wort. Use your wort chiller to chill the wort back to 75°F or cooler, depending on how warm your tap water is. Or, put the pot in a cooler with lots of ice water in it. Use a clean metal spoon to create a whirlpool in the wort, which will help it chill faster. Hopefully you will see gnarly bits in the wort that look like egg drop soup, or separating miso in soup: That's cold crash trub, and seeing it means you will have a clearer beer.
Move the wort to the fermentor. Add the yeast to the fermentor; I use a glass carboy. Pour the contents of the pot through a sanitized strainer into the fermentor. If the strainer gets all gunked up with trub, remove it before continuing. Put a sanitized airlock on the fermentor and put the beer in a place where it can ferment cool, ideally 66°F to 69°F. Leave it there for 1 week.
Rack the beer to a secondary. If there is a lot of gunk in the fermentor, rack the beer from the primary fermentor to a sanitized secondary fermentor -- this one needs to be a glass carboy. I do this only if there is a lot of crud in the fermentor. Either way, let the beer finish fermenting for 1 more week.
Bottle or keg the beer. If you are bottling, you want to add enough priming sugar to the batch to get about 3.4 volumes of CO2. If you are using the lactic acid, add it to the beer with the priming sugar before bottling. Bottle condition 2 weeks before drinking.