All About Gose Beer: How Gose Beer Is Made

Gose beer is a variety of top-fermented German beer that typically features coriander and salt. The process of brewing gose beer includes lacto-fermentation, giving the beer its distinct sour flavor. Gose is light-bodied, fruity, and relatively low in alcohol, with an ABV that ranges from 4.2 to 4.8 percent.

The process of brewing gose beer has a long history beginning in Germany:

• Goslar: Gose beer traces its origins to the year 1,000 C.E, from the small town of Goslar, situated on the Gose River in Lower Saxony, in present-day Germany. The beer got its salt content from the river water.
• Leipzig: Centuries later, the gose brewing center migrated to the nearby city of Leipzig, where it became a popular local type of brew, very closely associated with Leipzig and its beer culture.
• Reinheitsgebot: Gose is exempt from Germany’s Reinheitsgebot law, which stipulates that German beer can only include water, barley, yeast, and hops.
• Production: Gose beer’s popularity ebbed and flowed, with production ceasing after 1966 due to political tensions, then restarting in the 1980s with the reopening of a gose tavern.
• Location: Gose beer has undergone a resurgence in international popularity, with several American microbreweries offering gose-style beer. You can find gose beer on taproom menus and in beverage coolers globally.

Gose beer is principally a wheat beer, meaning it’s made from malted wheat grains rather than just barley, which is the more common brewing grain. Gose brewers add sea salt and coriander to the brew, giving the beer a slight citrus flavor and a hint of salinity. Finally, the addition of lactic acid—a byproduct of fermentation—provides the beer with a slight sourness.

Several contemporary craft beer brewers offer gose-inspired options, using the basic gose template as a jumping-off point. While the more traditional Leipziger gose is more subtle in flavor, some American craft brewers produce bold, juicy, and funky varieties. There are gose subtypes made with extra fruit flavors, such as cherry and passionfruit, while others have citrus flavors, such as grapefruit, lime, and blood orange, which accentuate the acidity.

The methods for producing gose beer have changed over time, and modern equipment makes specific steps in the process relatively easy. Below is a rough breakdown of the process:

1. 1. Top fermentation: Gose beer is made through a process known as top fermentation. This means that the yeasts responsible for fermenting the sugars in the grain mash into alcohol are present on the top of the brewing vat of beer rather than at the bottom.
2. 2. Wheat: The standard ratio for gose is pilsner malt (a variety of malted barley) to wheat at a ratio of 40:60. The wheat gives the characteristic fruitiness to the finished flavor. The addition of hops is either skipped or minimal in gose, so these beers are low on bitterness, which is measured in International Bitterness Units (IBUs).
3. 3. Mash: The mash is the portion of beer brewing wherein the malted grains are heated in water for a specific amount of time. This creates sugars and other compounds that flavor the beer and provide food for the yeasts that will later be added.
4. 4. Lacto-fermentation: Originally, gose beer was spontaneously fermented, meaning the yeast responsible for the fermentation—including the lacto-fermentation that adds notes of sourness—would arrive naturally simply by their presence in the air. Modern brewers have various options for adding the sour notes of flavor; usually, they add a specific strain of lactobacillus bacteria to the brewing process. They can also add lactic acid itself to the finished product.
5. 5. Flavoring: Brewers add the extra flavoring elements in gose—specifically, salt and coriander—last. This provides the hint of brine and the citrusy tang that gives gose its characteristic flavor profile.

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