When Brooklyn's Sixpoint Brewery debuted its Jammer gose earlier this summer, feedback wasn't promising. Drinkers used to over-the-top domestic interpretations of this archaic German wheat beer style weren't impressed with Sixpoint's more traditional approach, which favored nuance and balance over enamel-stripping sourness and mouth-desiccating salinity levels.
Sixpoint should have been praised for not jumping on the modern gose bandwagon — as well as for not including a ridiculous pun using the word gose in the name of the beer — but that's the way it gose in craft beer circles. (See how annoying that is?)
Enter Jammer 2.0. The new version is more sour than the original and includes about 7 percent more hand-harvested sea salt, courtesy of Oregon's Jacobsen Salt Co. The beer is also visibly clearer than its predecessor. The flavor is balanced three ways: sour (lactobacillus — the bacteria that makes sauerkraut and yogurt), salty (sea salt) and spicy (coriander). It's more aggressive in the flavor department than the old Jammer, but it still has plenty of subtle complexity.
Both batches can be found around the bay area if you look hard enough, and this calls for a side-by-side tasting. Check the bottom of the can. A BB25OCT2015 code means it's the old batch, while a BB18DEC2015 code means it's the new one. Both are excellent warm weather sippers, perfect for enjoying the last days of summer.
Justin Grant , Times correspondent