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Chicagoist's Beer Of The Week: Off Color's Troublesome

By Jason Baldacci in Food on Jul 25, 2014 9:45PM

2014_7_25_troublesome.jpgWe checked out the recently opened Beermiscuous Craft Beer Cafe (2812 N. Lincoln Ave.) this week, and we were delighted to find one of our favorite, local wheat beers on tap.

Troublesome is a Gose-style beer from the good gentlemen of Off Color Brewing. The nose is a nice balance of freshly milled grains and tangy lactobacillus, or wild, bacteria. That tanginess translates to the palate in a very approachable way, as other brewer's representations of this style are a lot more sour than Troublesome. This beer comes with very balanced acidity and active carbonation that's almost soda-like in the way the bubbles dissipate on your tongue. Staying true to the style, Troublesome is brewed with salt and coriander. The former gives the beer wonderful minerality, while the latter gives it a little lingering spice on the finish. At 4.5 percent alcohol content, Troublesome is bone-dry, and one of the most unique, and appropriate summer beers you might come across, although we like it so much that we'd drink it during any season. Fortunately for us, Off Color brews this one year-round.

We've featured a Gose beer before, but to refresh your memory, it's a very old style of wheat beer from Germany that's traditionally brewed with salt and coriander, and fermented with lactobacillus/wild bacteria. To brew Troublesome, the guys at Off Color actually brew two different beers to start, one an inoffensive wheat beer and the other a super funky beer that's fermented entirely with lactobacillus, and then they blend those two beers together before they keg or bottle it. This is not a traditional practice, but we're big fans of it since it allows the brewery to have a little more control over the final product and maintain consistency from batch to batch. Honestly, we haven't had a beer from Off Color that we didn't like, and we believe they're making some of the most interesting beer in the midwest these days.

Troublesome is available on draft and in six-packs, check beermenus.com to see where you can find some today.