Sour & wild
Gose
A lightly sour German wheat beer with added salt and coriander — tart, savoury and unusually thirst-quenching.
- Strength
- 4–5% ABV
- Bitterness
- 5–12 IBU
- Colour
- Pale straw to gold
- Serve at
- 4–7°C
Pronounced GOH-zuh.
Gose originates in Goslar and became associated with Leipzig. The salt is the distinguishing feature: originally from naturally saline local water, now added deliberately. It gives a savoury edge that makes the beer strikingly refreshing and unusually good with food.
It sits awkwardly with German purity conventions because of the coriander and salt, and has historically been treated as a regional exception.
Gose is one of very few beer styles brewed with salt, alongside coriander and a lactic sourness, and the combination sounds stranger than it tastes. The salt does not read as salty so much as it rounds the acidity and makes the beer taste fuller, in the same way a pinch of salt works in cooking.
It is a regional German revival — nearly extinct by the late twentieth century and rebuilt from a handful of surviving examples and records. A good one is gently tart rather than aggressively sour, refreshing, and balanced enough that the salt and coriander are noticeable only if you look for them.
Questions this page answers
- what does gose taste like — How it tastes
- gose abv — Measurements
- gose food pairing — What to eat with it
- gose serving temperature — Serving
- how long does gose last — Freshness and storage
- styles similar to gose — If you like this, try
- how to brew gose — How it is made
- what beer is an example of gose — Beers to try
- is unintended acidity normal in gose — Characteristics that may be expected here
How it tastes
BeerHQ’s own comparative scale, not a measurement. Each bar is a range because a style is a span of real beers rather than one beer.
Appearance and character
| Colour | Pale straw to gold |
|---|---|
| Clarity | hazy |
| Head | White, moderate |
| Fermentation | Mixed fermentation. Brewer-selected cultures beyond a single yeast — typically Saccharomyces plus Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus and/or Pediococcus — often over months in wood. |
| Origin | Germany |
Measurements
Conventional ranges published by style bodies, not a specification. IBU measures iso-alpha acids in a lab and does not track perceived bitterness — compare it against the sensory scale above rather than reading it as a flavour rating.
| Measurement | Typical range |
|---|---|
| ABV | 4–5% ABV |
| IBU | 5–12 IBU |
| Colour | Pale straw to gold — 3–4 SRM, 6–8 EBC. |
| Original gravity | 1.036–1.056 |
| Final gravity | 1.006–1.010 |
| Carbonation | 2–3 vol CO₂ |
Classified by BJCP-2021 as Gose (exact fit). BeerHQ maintains its own taxonomy and records how it maps onto others rather than adopting any one of them.
What goes into it
| Malt | Pilsner malt, Wheat malt |
|---|---|
| Yeast | Lactobacillus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae |
Serving
| Temperature | 4–7°C |
|---|---|
| Glass | Wit tumbler, Weizen glass |
| Dispense | Bottle conditioned — Beer refermented in the bottle with added yeast and sugar, producing natural carbonation and excellent ageing potential. |
Freshness and storage
Gose shows best within 3–9 months of packaging. After that it declines in quality rather than becoming unsafe.
No benefit from keeping. Sound for its window and then slowly less good. Nothing bad will happen quickly, but nothing good happens either.
- Soured during production rather than through a long maturation with a live culture. The acidity itself is stable, but the delicacy around it is not, and keeping the beer does not develop anything new.
What changes with time
- Staling. The general, gradual loss of freshness that affects all beer, accelerated sharply by warmth. Months, and roughly twice as fast for every 10 °C warmer.
In the package
- Brown glass bottle — No format-specific concerns beyond the general advice above.
Old beer tastes worse; it does not become dangerous. Ethanol, low pH, hop compounds and the absence of oxygen make packaged beer hostile to the organisms that cause foodborne illness. The exception is a compromised package — visible mould at the closure, a pierced or rusted can, a lifted cap — which is a reason to discard the beer regardless of its age.
Guidance, not an expiry date. How a beer is stored matters more than the date printed on it, and staling roughly doubles in rate for every 10 °C. See storage and freshness for the full model.
What to eat with it
- Fried food
Lactic acidity and salt together do to fried food what a squeeze of lemon does. Light-bodied enough to keep working through a whole plate.
- Sourdough bread
Bread and beer are the same process stopped at different points, and the tang in a sourdough crumb comes from the same lactic bacteria that sour a gose. The salt in the gose then does what salted butter would.
- Dim sum
Beer and dish carry similar weight, so neither flattens the other.
- Feta
Beer and dish carry similar weight, so neither flattens the other.
- Goat's cheese
Beer and dish carry similar weight, so neither flattens the other.
- Guacamole
Beer and dish carry similar weight, so neither flattens the other.
Beers to try
Widely-known examples BeerHQ carries as reference points for this style. Not a recommendation list and not ranked — these are the beers that make the category concrete.
If you like this, try
Berliner Weisse
The other German sour wheat beer, sharper and without salt.
Suits you if: You like Gose but want more dryness. Reason not to: The main shift is more dryness, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
Kettle sour
Same family — both are Sour & wild beers.
Suits you if: You like Gose but want less dryness. Reason not to: The main shift is less dryness, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
Witbier
A comparable coriander-spiced wheat beer without the acidity.
Suits you if: You like Gose but want less acidity. Reason not to: Noticeably less acidity than Gose, which may make it feel thin by comparison.
American wild ale
Same family — both are Sour & wild beers.
Suits you if: You like Gose but want more funk. Reason not to: Noticeably more funk than Gose, which not everyone wants.
Flanders red ale
Same family — both are Sour & wild beers.
Suits you if: You like Gose but want more berry. Reason not to: Noticeably more berry than Gose, which not everyone wants.
Compare with
- Gose vs Kettle sour — Gose and Kettle sour are closer than the comparison suggests. The measurable differences are small — berry is the largest of them — so tradition, strength and what each is brewed for will tell you more than the flavour axes do.
- Gose vs Oud Bruin — The main difference is dryness: Gose has far more of it than Oud Bruin. Oud Bruin also leads on malt intensity, caramel & toffee and funk.
- Gose vs Flanders red ale — The main difference is funk: Flanders red ale has noticeably more of it than Gose. Gose also leads on citrus; Flanders red ale on caramel & toffee and berry.
- Gose vs American wild ale — The main difference is funk: American wild ale has far more of it than Gose. Gose also leads on citrus and bread & biscuit; American wild ale on alcohol warmth.
Characteristics that may be expected here
Each of these is treated as a fault in most beer, and in this style it can be part of the character. Intensity and context decide which: a trace that suits the style and an obvious, dominating version of the same thing are not the same finding. Follow the link where you want to work out which one you have.
Unintended acidity
Lactic acidity is the defining feature of every style listed. It is a fault only where it was not intended — a sour pilsner is broken, a sour gose is correct.
Faults to watch for
- Unintended acidity — Lactic sourness in a style that should not have it — a fault of intent rather than of the organism responsible.
- Infection — Unintended microbial growth — which is a fault only because it was unintended, since the same organisms define lambic.
How it got here
Gose takes its name from a river in Goslar and its character from salt and coriander, an unusual combination that predates the Bavarian purity law and was permitted regionally as an established local practice. It became associated with Leipzig, where it was widely drunk.
It stopped being brewed entirely in the middle of the twentieth century. The revival began in Leipzig in the 1980s and remained small until American brewers took the style up thirty years later, which is why most gose brewed today is not German.
How it is made
The steps that shape this style in particular, rather than the ones every beer goes through.
- Kettle souring — Sour wort with Lactobacillus before the boil, then boil to kill the bacteria and ferment clean — producing lactic acidity in days rather than years.
- Sour mashing — Acidify wort by holding the mash warm and letting lactic bacteria already present on the grain work before the boil.
Sensory levels are BeerHQ’s editorial abstraction, described as None–Very high on a six-point scale. Measurements are conventional style ranges. Last reviewed 2026-08-15.
Evidence
What BeerHQ knows about this, and how. Every statement carries the state of the evidence behind it rather than being presented flatly as fact.
On Infection
Packaged beer is a hostile environment for human foodborne pathogens: the combination of ethanol, a pH typically between about 3.8 and 4.6, hop-derived iso-alpha-acids with antibacterial activity, near-absent oxygen and dissolved carbon dioxide means no such pathogen is known to survive and grow in it.
Backed by a source
Sources: Brewing: Science and Practice — print; Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print
On Infection
The organisms that do spoil beer — chiefly Lactobacillus, Pediococcus and Brettanomyces — are the same organisms deliberately used to produce sour and mixed-fermentation styles, which is why the identical organism is contamination in one brewery and the product in another.
Backed by a source
Sources: Brewing: Science and Practice — print; Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation — print
On Lactobacillus
Many Lactobacillus strains are inhibited by hop iso-alpha-acids, which is why kettle souring is performed before the hop addition and why heavily-hopped beer resists lactic spoilage.
Backed by a source
Sources: Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation — print; Brewing: Science and Practice — print
On Infection
A compromised package — visible mould at the closure, a pierced or corroded can, a lifted cap or cork — admits organisms the beer’s own chemistry did not exclude, and is the situation in which discarding the beer is the correct response.
Backed by a source
Source: Institute of Brewing & Distilling technical publications
On Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Louis Pasteur’s work in the 1860s and 1870s established that fermentation is caused by living microorganisms and that beer spoilage is microbial, which made deliberate control of both possible for the first time.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: The Story of the Pint — print; Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print
On Unintended acidity
Lactic acid bacteria spoil beer by acidifying it, by forming haze, and by producing diacetyl — so a contaminated beer often arrives sour, cloudy and buttery together rather than sour alone.
Checked against the source
Source: Bokulich & Bamforth, "The Microbiology of Malting and Brewing" (2013), Gram-positive bacteria (Microbiol Mol Biol Rev 77(2):157–172)