312 Urban Wheat Ale: 4.0 – Don’t worry this is the final Goose Island, and this time it’s finally not an IPA. The lemon here is light, but welcome. Overall it’s basically a nothing beer. You taste a basic wheaty ale for like a second and then nothing. Now we bought this ‘5 beer’ sampler pack because it came with a shandy, but color us surprised that our favorite is an IPA (they did have 3 tries at it though)
Price Average: $11 for 6 Pack 12oz
Website: https://www.gooseisland.com
Next Coast IPA: 5.0 – We know, 3 IPAs in as many weeks – have we gone mad? Or did we just end up purchasing a sampler pack not realizing how many IPAs were in it (Vote now on your phones!). So we truly enjoyed the Hazy IPA, but were less pleased with the regular fare – how does this one match up? Well smack dab in the middle of the two. Now this is meant to be a bit more juicy and tropical, and it is. However it still has that bitterness from the normal IPA so the result is something that apparently require cinnamon to become better.
Price Average: $12 for 6 Pack 12oz cans
Website: https://www.gooseisland.com
Goose Island IPA: 2.0 – Given how pleasing the Hazy IPA was last week, it seemed right to check out the OG. Unfortunately while that was delicious, fruity, and flavorful (albeit mostly cinnamon) the result here is more true to form. It’s not super hoppy, but damn does it have a lot of bitterness. The sad thing is even as a shandy the bitterness shines through here and there’s not enough hops to balance out either.
Price Average: $6 for 4 Pack 16oz cans
Website: https://www.gooseisland.com
Lost Palate: 7.5 – We typically shy from IPA reviews because of pure saturation, and because we mostly don’t like them (except as a shandy!) There are of course exceptions to the rule, and that’s what you get here. This Lost Palate really wears the mango and cinnamon on it’s sleeve, not in a ‘oh I detect notes of cardamon’ nonsense – this really has got cinnamon going on. The result with that mango is that there really isn’t any bitterness at all. If there’s an issue it’s that the mango goes away rather quickly, making it very easy to down a lot of this and there’s not much aside from the two hit combo – but if this is what ‘hazy’ means we should all get hazy.
Price Average: $3
Website: https://www.gooseisland.com
Fleur: 5.5 – Fairly good belgian ale, nice bit of sweetness to it. Again though it’s gone the route of a Belgian style ale, but it lacks the real gravitas that most belgians have in terms of taste.
Google Shop Average: Fleur $8
Website: http://www.gooseisland.com/