A lightly sour, lightly salty wheat ale from Leipzig, Germany — pale, hazy, and flavored with coriander and salt in addition to Lactobacillus-derived tartness. Typically 4–5% ABV. Nearly extinct by the mid-20th century and revived in Leipzig in the 1980s; popularized globally by American craft brewers in the 2010s.
In the glass
Origin
Gose takes its name from the town of Goslar in Lower Saxony, on the Gose river, where the beer was first brewed in the late medieval period. Its characteristic salinity is traditionally attributed to the mineral-rich local water. The beer found its lasting home in Leipzig, about a hundred miles to the southeast, where local breweries were producing it by 1738; by 1900 the city had more than eighty Gose taverns. Early Gose was spontaneously fermented and delivered to taverns still actively working, finishing its fermentation in long-necked bottles topped with a natural plug of yeast rather than a cap or cork.
The style declined sharply through the 20th century. The Döllnitz manor brewery near Halle — where Gose had been brewed since 1824 — was the last major producer, and it closed after the Second World War. A former Döllnitz brewer reopened a tiny Gose operation in Leipzig afterward, but when that brewery closed in 1966 commercial production ceased entirely. In the 1980s Lothar Goldhahn restored a historic Leipzig Gose tavern and brought the beer back, having it brewed to a recovered recipe; the modern Leipzig revival broadened from there, with Bayerischer Bahnhof and the Ritterguts label among the producers carrying it forward. American craft brewers re-popularized the style globally in the 2010s, frequently in fruited interpretations.
Notes
A close neighbor is Berliner Weisse — both are pale, low-strength, lactic German wheat sours — but Gose is set apart by its added salt and coriander, which also place it outside the German purity law (it survives as a protected regional specialty). The salty, mineral finish is meant to be perceived gently rather than read as overtly briny, and it is one of the things that makes the style so quenching. The wave of modern fruited and heavily seasoned American versions is now recognized as its own distinct category, separate from the classic Leipzig original.
Defining examples
Bayerischer Bahnhof Leipziger Gose·Ritterguts Gose·Anderson Valley The Kimmie, The Yink and The Holy Gose·Westbrook Gose