Style: Gose
Brewery: Friends Company
Origin: Sweden
Size: 33cl
Alcohol: 4.7%
Price: 45kr
Systembolaget: 39050
When you find a beer that you really like, it’s only natural to try some more from the same range. This is part of the “Smoojee” series of sours, characterised by a thick body and heavy fruit notes. This is the third beer I’ve tried from this range, and I thought the first two were amazing, so I knew I was in capable hands with this! The brewery is based in Helsingborg and has been active since 2016. This is produced with strawberry, pineapple and sea salt as added ingredients, and was first released in April 2023. Even though this was the second gose I had in this tasting, there were very different in style, so it worked out well.
This had a light orange to rhubarb colour with a light head that collected around the outside of the glass but was never a major feature of the beer. The strawberry scent was the major attraction of the beer, with the tropical fruits backing it up. I expected more acidity, for there was little to none of it from those lovely fruit aromas. On the palate, the beer was thick, with a creamy body that stuck to the whole mouth and coated it. The strawberry again dominated in the taste, with the pineapple taking a backseat to those red fruit flavours. The salt was unfortunately non-existent, which is a shame because I think it would have been good to have been a bit more prominent to balance out the powerful strawberry notes. Strawberry can be a hard ingredient in beer, as it is very easy to taste a bit artificial, and unfortunately that is the case here. The after-taste was quite sweet but not overly so, with the fruit fading gradually into a dry note on the back of the tongue.
This was nice, but I think this was probably the worst in the range that I’ve tried so far. I think the price is too expensive for what you get as well. In the end though, this was a nice summer beer, but the synthetic notes did it no favours.