From the Widmer 4-pack I received the other day comes the beautiful Marionberry Hibiscus Gose, Widmer’s latest entry into their 924 Series of specialty beers and one that I’ve had before, at the Oregon Garden Brewfest. At that time, I wrote:

…the beer was fantastic. I wrote, “Ok, love this beer—berry is subtle as is the coriander and salt—super drinkable, lovely tart character where the berries come back out of it at the end—like eating fresh and sour raspberries off the bush.” I wish (hope) they would bottle this beer!

Thankfully they listened! Well okay, probably not really, but I can imagine they did!

The beer itself is 5.5% abv and described by the brewery thusly:

Gose is a traditional cloudy German style wheat beer that balances tart and slightly salty flavors with a soft malt background. Our unique take uses a healthy dose of Oregon-grown marionberries as well as dried hibiscus flowers for a tart, floral profile with clove & coriander flavors to round it out. Prost! or Goseanna!

I’ll leave it to the purists to debate the style; suffice to say I find this to be an extremely good beer.

Appearance: Beautiful cranberry pink color and lightly pink head of foam that broke down quickly.

Smell: Coriander and a touch of fruit, and I want to say sea salt. Very appealing and appetizing—it’s got a mouth-watering aroma somehow, which could be from the interplay of the berries and coriander spicing.

Taste: Tart right up front with both lacto and green tart berry character; juicy; coriander complements nicely with a subtle spice/celery thing going on. Very pleasant, I want to keep sipping. No real salt flavor that I can discern but the berries and the pucker is very nice.

Mouthfeel: Light, crisp, clean, cleansing.

Overall: Yummy and both a well-brewed fruit beer and sour ale.

Here’s Marionberry Hibiscus Gose on Untappd. On BeerAdvocate it scores 80/100. On RateBeer it scores 3.11/5 and is in their 56th percentile.