Muskmelon — another word for cantaloupe — gave the beer its distinctive orange color, but the taste wasn't for everyone. The double gose (sometimes abbreviated "doge" on the blackboard) had a small but vocal minority who liked it, but wasn't popular enough to keep in the rotation. The brewers had briefly experimented with a lighter-bodied version that wasn't as sharp, and not as pungent or orange-colored, that was called Donnie the Younger. But it turned out no one liked that one, not even fans of Donnie the Elder.
The first time I saw Donnie the Elder on tap at the brewery, I asked where the name came from. I mean, obviously it is an homage to Russian River Pliny the Elder, but I wondered who Donnie was. The head brewer happened to be standing behind the bar, and he laughed when he heard the question. "That's a good story!" he said. Here's a paraphrase of what he told me:
Donnie was this scruffy orange cat that used to hang around the brewery parking lot. The first time we saw how orange the cantaloupe made our gose, we knew we would name the beer after the cat. Come to think of it, almost no one liked Donnie the cat either — terrible personality, fur sticking up in bizarre ways, peeing on everything. There was this one weird and unpleasant assistant brewer named Leon that was here for a while, and one of the weird things about him was, he actually liked the cat. He's the one who named it. I think he named it after Donnie Darko, but maybe it was Donnie from the Big Lebowski. Anyway, Leon got Donnie neutered and deflead, but he was still a terrible cat. We weren't too sad when Leon left with Donnie. I wonder where Leon is now?
