Beer · Light & sessionable
Gose
Tart, salty, citrusy — the thousand-year-old German beer that tastes brand new.
How to order it: Coriander and sea salt. Margarita energy in beer form.
Flavor profile
The proper serve
- Tulip glass
- Serve cold, 40–45°F
- Expect salt and tartness
- Pairs: oysters, tacos, hot days
- Fruited versions are fair game
The story
Gose takes its name from the river running through Goslar, where the style is said to date back a thousand years, and found its great home in Leipzig — where the local taste for this tart, salted, coriander-spiced wheat beer earned it an exemption from purity-law orthodoxy as a protected regional specialty. By the early nineteenth century it dominated Leipzig drinking; by the late twentieth it was effectively extinct, finished off by war and East German consolidation. A 1980s Leipzig revival kept the flame, but the unlikely rescue came from American craft brewers, who discovered that salt and sourness were exactly what modern palates wanted. The thousand-year-old beer now reads as avant-garde.
Adjacent pours