Water & Soil

The Harz is a range of low mountains built from ancient, hard rock, topped by the Brocken at 1,141 meters. Rain and snow seep through granite, greywacke and slate before flowing out in streams like the Oker. Water from this kind of bedrock is usually soft and low in dissolved minerals, a trait brewers value for pale beers with a clean bitterness.

In Goslar, tradition tells a different story. The water used for Gose, so the story goes, passed through ore-bearing ground and picked up minerals, including salt. The faintly salty character of old Goslar beers would then not have been a recipe quirk but a taste of the landscape itself. This is only backed by later lore, not by medieval measurements.

Why does beer rarely taste of its water source today? Because nearly every brewery treats its water. They strip out hardness, add salts, or filter until the brewing liquor suits the style. Gose gets its salt added quite deliberately, in carefully measured amounts. Brauhaus Goslar advertises Harz brewing water, though it doesn't publish any figures.

Location also shapes how beer is stored. In the mountains, summers are cool and winters long, which made cold storage easier long before refrigeration existed. The brewery in Altenau claims to be the highest-altitude brewery in northern Germany, and it still uses a directly fired kettle. Wernigerode, home to Hasseröder, sits on the northeastern edge of the range.