Without an actual entry to lookup in the time zone database, you can't know the true location for the time. If you want to work with just an offset, you can create a fixed location using time.FixedZone
edt := time.FixedZone("EDT", -60*60*4)
t, _ := time.ParseInLocation("02 Jan 06 15:04", "15 Sep 17 14:55", edt)
fmt.Println(t)
// 2017-09-15 14:55:00 -0400 EDT
You can opt to specify a non-existent zone name, or none at all, as long as the output format you use doesn't require one.
minus4 := time.FixedZone("", -60*60*4)
t, _ = time.ParseInLocation("02 Jan 06 15:04", "15 Sep 17 14:55", minus4)
fmt.Println(t.Format(time.RFC3339))
// 2017-09-15T14:55:00-04:00