Beer Styles

What is a Gose? A pale, top-fermented beer made from wheat and barley malt, seasoned with salt and coriander and mildly soured with lactic acid. It tastes bright and lemony, faintly salty, and barely bitter at all. The word is pronounced "GO-zuh," with a long o, like "rose." According to the style guidelines, alcohol content ranges from 4.2 to 4.8 percent, making it a light beer.

How does Gose differ from Berliner Weisse? Both are tart wheat beers, but Gose carries salt and coriander while Berliner Weisse does not. Bavarian Weissbier, by contrast, isn't sour at all; it's soft, with banana and clove notes from the yeast. And as for how Gose differs from Belgian Gueuze: Gueuze is spontaneously fermented, carries no salt or coriander, and has a noticeably sharper acidity.

In Goslar, you'll find Gose in two colors. Brauhaus Goslar pours both a pale and a dark version, alongside a Rammelsberger Pils. The dark variant is a house specialty and falls outside the usual style guidelines.

The Harz's second style is less exotic. Hasseröder in Wernigerode brews Pils, and Altenau also carries an Edelpils in its lineup. German Pils, per the style guidelines, runs 4.4 to 5.2 percent alcohol with 22 to 40 IBU, making it considerably more bitter than Gose.

Both beers answer the same question, namely what tastes good after a long day in the mountains, with two completely different answers. Pils answers with dryness and bitterness. Gose answers with freshness and a touch of salt that quenches thirst.