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What

60+
Happens
When You
Inherit a
Winery
Reasons
to Love The Most
What You Delicious
Drink German Beer
hint: You're Not
This Cocktail
Includes a Few
Drinking
(get the recipe
on page 43)
San Francisco
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 So
the
Story
GoseA salty, sour German beer is
making a delicious comebAck.
SEVErAL SEPTEMBErS AGo, Eric Rose
and Jonathan Cutler were prowling the
suds-dappled floor of Denver’s Great
American Beer Festival. Amid the piney
IPAs and espresso-black imperial stouts,
Rose, the owner and head brewer of Gole-
ta, California’s Hollister Brewing Compa- STORY BY
ny, stumbled upon the pale-yellow Gose Joshua M. Bernstein
Speziell Weizen, hailing from Minneapo- PHOTOS BY
lis’ Herkimer Pub & Brewery. Stuart Mullenberg

66 imbibemagazine.com ~ may/june 2011

A freshly brewed gose out of
the tap at Cascade Brewing.
Cascade Brewing's springtime gose
is seasoned with salt, coriander, dried
lemon peel, chamomile and lavender.

68 imbibemagazine.com ~ may/june 2011

 At first blush, little distinguished Herkimer’s elixir from
similarly hued brews. Yet a single sip revealed a unique tart-
ness. What was that appetizing, tongue-enveloping flavor?
Salt? Yes, that’s the signature ingredient of sour gose (pro-
nounced gose-uh), an ancient German wheat beer seasoned
with coriander. Though Rose liked Herkimer’s gose, he thought
it could be even more sour. He and Cutler, the head brewer at
Chicago’s Piece Brewery & Pizzeria and a German-beer spe-
cialist, bounced ideas back and forth, settling on a traditional
lactic fermentation—a tricky technique, given bacteria’s un-
predictability. “Everybody said good luck with that,” laughs
Rose, 35, who received guidance from a local microbiologist.
He brewed his gose with a few fistfuls of coriander, less
than a pound of salt (a teensy amount for 10 barrels of beer)
and a smattering of aged hops for balance, then pitched in
souring Lactobacillus bacteria and, later, hefeweizen yeast.
Upon sampling, “it was sour from start to finish—the acid was
the show,” Rose says of his distinctly lemony brew. Since he
doubted customers would drink it straight, he offered his cre-
ation—dubbed Tiny Bubbles—alongside cherry and raspberry
syrups. But Tiny Bubbles required no sweet touch. “The salt
brought everything together,” Rose says of his beer, which won
over drinkers at his brewpub and judges at the 2010 GABF,
where it nabbed a silver medal. “It’s like salt on a steak,” Rose
says. “It leaves a really interesting flavor that brings you back
over and over again.”
In recent years, the sour brews classically found in Belgium
have bewitched American brewers, who employ wild yeasts
and bacteria to create the tart ales. Now brewers are taking a
shine to Germany’s sour-beer tradition. First the acidic, low-al-
cohol Berliner weisse was all the rage. Now salty, lip-puckering
gose is making the leap from history books to the bar.
You’ll find this quirky quaff at Indianapolis’s Brugge Bras-
serie, which makes Bad Kitty, and the Draught House Pub &
Brewery in Austin, Texas, which serves Sunshade Gose as a
summer seasonal (sunshade—Sonnenschirm—is gose’s Ger-
man nickname). New Hampshire’s Portsmouth Brewery of-
fers a gose trio, including a winter-warming imperial version,
while Portland, Oregon’s Cascade Brewing creates a unique
gose for each season. Fellow Portlandite Upright Brewing in-
stead releases its gose as an early spring seasonal. “It’s differ-
ent, exciting and can still be aggressive,” says owner and head
brewer Alex Ganum, 31. “Gose has an edge to it that appeals
to people.”
salty for centuries
Putting salt in beer may seem sacrilegious, but for centuries
the seasoning has been key to this strange, singular German
beverage. Like the Berliner weisse, gose is one of northern Ger-
many’s traditional top-fermenting wheat beers. While both are
sour, gose diverges by incorporating salt and coriander, a spice
typically found in the Belgian witbier. Though some historians
speculate that gose is related to Belgium’s gueuze—a blend
of aged lambics—Gose originated in Goslar, a mining town
in northwestern Germany and takes its name from the river
Gose, which courses through the city.
Sharp, twangy gose proved popular and by the 1700s had
caught on in Leipzig, located about 100 miles east, where it be-
came a local favorite. Leipzig brewers also began manufactur-
ing gose, and as recently as 1900 there were reportedly more
than 80 licensed gosenschenke—that is, gose tavern—where
one could get a glass of the salty stuff, which was sometimes
served with a cumin-flavored liqueur. “You see that with many
of the old north-Germany beer styles,” explains beer historian
Ronald Pattinson, 54, the author of Porter! and Brown Beer.
“They drank them with spirits because the beers weren’t very
alcoholic.”
Despite currying local favor, “gose was never the majority
of beer drank in Leipzig,” Pattinson continues. “The amount
of gose produced was quite limited,” likely because few people
had mastered its tricky production. From its late-19th-century
peak gose gradually declined, as a lager craze swept Germany,
wiping out small-scale breweries specializing in top-ferment-
ing beer. Gose survived until World War II dealt it a deadly
blow. Across Germany during that era, beer production tem-
porarily ceased. When smoke and rubble were cleared, Leipzig
found itself in Communist German Democratic Republic. In
1945, the last remaining gose brewery was confiscated and
closed. Leipzig’s Friedrich Wurzler Brauerei revived gose in
1949, but when the owner died in 1966, so did gose.
The style lay dormant till the 1980s, when bar owner Lothar
Goldhahn decided to restore Leipzig’s Ohne Bedenken, once
one of the city’s most famous gosenschenke. To fill taps, he
contracted breweries to craft gose. “It had been 20 years since
people had gose, so he had people who drank gose try it,” Pat-
tinson says. It passed muster. After a rocky period where pro-
duction ceased again, “there are more breweries making gose
in Germany than any time since World War II,” Pattinson says.
“It’s a remarkable comeback.” He counts at least four gose-pro-
ducing German breweries, including Brauhaus Hartmanns-
dorf, makers of the laser-tart Goedecke Döllnitzer Ritterguts
Gose, and Gasthaus & Gosebrauerei Bayrischer Bahnhof, lo-
cated in Leipzig’s historic train station.
“It’s refreshing and highly complex,” says Matthias Neidhart,
54, the president of B. United International importers, of Ban-
hof ’s Leipziger Gose, which may soon be complemented by
an amber märzen and a strong bock version. “You have the
banana-y esters from the yeast and lactic character from the
bacteria and a dry, salty finish that’s not overpowering.” When
B. United began importing the gose around 2003, drinkers met
the beer with a blank stare. But thanks to the surging inter-
est in sour, “when you tell people about the lactic acid, salt
and coriander, their curiosity level goes up tremendously,” says
Neidhart. “It’s almost like a session beer in that you can easily
have a second or third. It’s so refreshing.”
We’ve Got styles
Creativity is a hallmark of American craft brewing. Untethered
from tradition, brewers use time-honored beer styles as a
springboard to innovation. Naturally, gose is getting the off-
beat treatment, but necessity is the mother of brewers’ tasty
inventions. Regarding gose, “there aren’t any brewing records
before the 1800s,” Pattinson says, noting that World War II de-
stroyed numerous documents. “Even going back 200 years is
difficult.” This creates a quandary when crafting a beer born
centuries earlier.
may/june 2011 ~ imbibemagazine.com 69
 “Whenever you’re playing around with an ancient style, ange peel, while spring’s release is flavored with chamomile,
you have no idea what the flavor should exactly be, so we’re lemon peel and lavender. The golden summer gose is the most
making a guess,” says Tod Mott, 53, the head brewer at Ports- traditional take, and it’s Gansberg’s preferred drink when tem-
mouth Brewery. Last year, he got bit by the gose bug after being peratures soar. “When it’s hot outside, you can get a glass of
approached by assistant brewer Tyler Jones. He was smitten gose down in a few guzzles, and then it’s back to work,” he says.
with making a salty brew because “his grandfather would put “That little bit of salt creates an electrolytic response. It’s re-
salt in any beer,” Mott says, laughing. freshing and rejuvenating.”
Originally, gose was soured via spontaneous fermentation, Besides its quenching character, Gansberg sees another
due to bacteria like Lactobacillus. (Later, lactic acid was like- benefit to offering gose. Compared to his other sour brews,
ly added instead.) Since Mott never messes with wild yeasts “gose is much more accessible because its acid level is much
and bacteria, he opted for a sour mash method. After mixing lower. We like to start people off with gose and transition them
the grain with water and boiling it to create wort—the sugary to the harder stuff,” Gansberg says, laughing. “Gose is a gate-
broth that becomes beer—Mott topped the mixture with raw way sour beer.”
wheat, sealed the brewing vessel and pumped in CO2 to form an
anaerobic environment. The grain’s natural bacteria munched of a certain Age
the sugars and created acidity. After boiling the sour blend to American brewers may be offering quirky spins on this classic
arrest the critters’ appetite, Mott added hefeweizen yeast to German quaff, but in certain regards they’re following tradi-
contribute flavors of bananas and cloves. The easy-drinking re- tion. According to Pattinson, old-guard gose brewers deliv-
sult was “just beautiful,” Mott says of the gose, which “flew out ered barrels of still-fermenting suds to gosenschenke while
of the pub like crazy. Customers loved it,” as well as his ensuing the beer was still frenetically active. The barrels were cellared
dark dunkel gose and imperial-strength gose. till fermentation slowed, whereupon proprietors transferred
Instead of sour mashing, Upright’s Ganum takes a different the gose into long-necked bottles, plugged them with yeast
tack to gose, which he was first introduced to at a homebrew and let the beer condition for at least one week, and no more
competition. “My friend was like, ‘You than three. “Customers would prefer
gotta try this,’ ” Ganum recalls of the a certain age of gose,” says Pattinson,
gose, which was, interestingly, soured
Gose A Go-Go
who warns of the hazards of this fin-
with lemon juice. “The salt changes icky method. “If there was exception-
the finish and makes it more appetiz- While gose fever is hitting craft ally hot weather, a pub could have an
ing. It makes you want to drink more entire cellar of gose go bad. The trick
brewers coast to coast, it remains
of it.” Intrigued by the style’s flavor was serving gose at the right degree
and low alcohol content—gose is tra- a regional brew that’s usually avail-
of maturity.”
ditionally less than 5 percent ABV— able only on draught at the brewer-
Cascade’s Gansberg also likes to
Ganum brewed his own version in fall ies where it’s made. But that might experiment with aging. “When goses
2009. He used a French saison yeast, soon change. Portland, Oregon’s age, they stay really crisp. You might
then fermented it at cooler tempera- Cascade Brewing hopes to start get some honey malt flavors com-
tures to impart a hefeweizen-like bottling its gose for national distri- ing through,” he says. “Acids are like
character. Cautious about overdoing bution this year, and others may be hops: Initially they’re like a raging
it with the lactic acid and salt, he ini- close behind. Until then, gose lovers mountain, very sharp and angular.
tially used too little of each. He added will continue to sate their thirst with Over time, goses tend to erode and
more salt and lactic acid, then more soften.” In fact, he recently sampled a
Gasthaus & Gosebrauerei Bayrisch-
still. The result was bright and acidic, gose he’d brewed in 2009 and found it
er Bahnhof’s archetypal Leipziger
offering notes of lemon and earth to be excellent.
paired with a drying, quenching close. Gose, which is available in bottles
Hollister’s Rose is also a fan of
“That’s probably the seasonal beer at beer shops nationwide, and with
maturation. “It gives it a round, full
that’s had the most requests. I always trips to their nearest gose-produc- flavor,” he says, adding that a cellared
get, ‘When are you going to brew the ing brew houses. Also look for two of version of Tiny Bubbles “tasted like
gose again?’ ” Ganum says of the early Leipziger’s sister brews on shelves a carbonated lemonade.” Still, for
spring specialty. later this year. Rose, nothing beats the aggressively
Spring is just one inspiration for tart, full-on pucker of fresh Tiny
Ron Gansberg, 54, head brewer at Port- Bubbles. In fact, he’s so eager to see
land, Oregon’s Cascade Brewing. Gansberg is renowned for craft- other brewers serve lactic-sour gose that he’s given his recipe
ing complex, painstakingly blended tart brews, so it follows that to a half dozen breweries, including Utah’s Squatters Pubs and
when he began dabbling in gose, he went all out. Using the tradi- Beers and Southern California’s Alpine Beer.
tional lactic-fermentation technique (the same one employed by “I’m happy to share it with anyone,” he says, offering anoth-
Hollister’s Rose), Gansberg crafts a distinct gose for each season. er advantage to brewing gose. “It’s an easy way for a brewery to
“One of the beauties of the style is that it’s open to interpretation,” get into the sour-beer game,” which is a time- and labor-inten-
Gansberg says of his beers, sometimes released simultaneously sive process. “You can do a sour beer in three or four weeks.”
as the “four goses of the apocalypse.” With more breweries crafting gose, Cascade’s Gansberg sees
For autumn, Gansberg adds orange peel, nutmeg and cin- the revived style’s potential as a table beer, something to sip
namon instead of the traditional coriander. The stronger holi- alongside food. For the first time in more than a century,
day version is spiced with cranberry, hibiscus flower and or- “drinking gose could be an everyday event,” Gansberg says.

70 imbibemagazine.com ~ may/june 2011

 Ron Gansberg at Cascade
Brewing in Portland, Oregon.