Gose Beer Goes Mainstream, 16 Gose Beers to Try

Over the past few years gose style beer has gained so much popularity that you can find it with regularity at bottle shops, craft beer bars, and breweries. Depending on where you live, it might even be more common than brown ale and porters. It certainly seems like that in the San Francisco Bay Area. I found 16 different gose beers and tried them all.

While researching an article about fruit beer I noticed that there are a lot of gose fruit beers. It seems that the popularity of gose is partially due to the fact that gose, as a beer style, works very well with the addition of fruit. The clean sourness, saltiness, and absence of bitterness seem to make it perfect for almost any fruit. I paused my research on fruit beers to write an article for Menuism and The Huffington Post all about gose style beers. While writing the article I tried a plethora of gose beers. These are the notes from all of those beers.

There are many more gose beers out there and I was unable to find some of the more notable ones like Westbrook Gose and the other Leipzig gose. This list is what I was able to get my hands on.

In no particular order:

Briney Melon Gose by Anderson Valley Brewing Company

Briney Melon builds on Anderson Valley’s regular gose with the addition of watermelon. The watermelon flavor is moderate and natural tasting like a combination of cantaloup, watermelon, and cucumber. This beer has a slight tartness, a touch of malty-sweetness, and a pinch of savory salt. When put together this beer is quite flavorful and refreshing. The combination of watermelon and salt works very well and you will especially enjoy it if you’ve ever tried salt on your watermelon, it’s quite a treat.

Citra Gose by Calicraft Brewing

This gose is dry hopped with Citra and Mosaic. The aroma is citrus and tropical fruit with a little salt water smell. The flavor is barely sour with a citrus acidity and a touch of residual sweetness. It also has a little more bitterness than most other gose beers that I’ve tried. Citra Gose is an interesting and delicious take on the style.

Fruitlands Passionfruit and Guava by Modern Times Beer

This beer has a cloudy yellow color with a thin white head. It has some grainy notes like crackers with fruity notes of passion fruit and guava. It also has a clean salt water spray quality to it. The flavor is only slightly sweet and moderately tart with a bright fruity passion fruit and guava flavor. The sourness of the beer combined with the fruit flavors and salt make this quite a refreshing beer. Towards the end of the bottle the beer was much more cloudy and more fruit flavors from the guava were present. This is a very nice fruit gose.

Peach Dodo by Rhinegeist

Lemon acidity, a touch of salt water, a tinge of fresh peaches. The flavor is tart with some salt on the finish. This is a fairly dry beer making it crisp and refreshing. The fruit is subtle yet enjoying, it’s definitely not sweet and cloying. This is a well done gose fruit beer.

Boom Boom Out Gose the Lights by High Water Brewing

This beer was released to celebrate High Water Brewing’s 5th Anniversary. It pours out with a pale golden color and is immediately pungent with the smell of galanga root. The galanga is earthy, a little floral, vegetal, and a slightly medicinal. The flavor of the beer has a honey sweetness with a pinch of salt to enhance the flavors but no discernible sourness or tart flavors, which is unfortunate because it might have made this interesting beer even better and more appropriate to style.

Otra Vez by Sierra Nevada Bre

The gose is brewed with grapefruit and cactus. The aroma has grapefruit peel, some grapefruit juice, and a hint of lemon juice. The salt and cactus give this an agave spirit quality. Otra Vez is quite tart and has a lemon juice like acidity. It has a noticeable, moderate saltiness to it. The texture is very effervescent giving it a quality like a mimosa made with grapefruit and lemon. It is crisp, refreshing, and quite amazing. The crystal clear straw color let’s you enjoy the numerous bubbles streaming to the top of the beer.

Sparkles Finds (Some) Trouble by Off Color Brewing

Off Color Brewing has made their gose with hibiscus and as such it pours out with a hazy orange-ish pink color and foamy white head. The aroma is earthy, floral, and vegetal with some mineral and a hint of sulfur. The flavor is sour with malt and some residual sweetness. The salt brings out some of the earthy flavors but is not intense.

Salty Dog by Local Brewing Co

Salty Dog is an unadulterated gose beer that comes fairly close the the german version. It is slightly more tart than the a Leipzig gose but the salt and malt levels are perfect making this a refreshing beer that is true to style.

High Castle Black Gose by TwoDEEP Brewing

High Castle is a collaboration brew between TwoDEEP Brewing and Scarlet Lane Brewing. It is one of the most unique takes on the beer style and I think the experimentation paid off. This is a dark gose that was fermented with Brettanomyces, instead of Lactobacillus, ad “dry hopped” with cacoa nibs. The aroma is like a chocolate balsamic vinaigrettebut without an instense acicitiy in the nose. It has a light sourness, noticeable salt, and a rich malt backbone.

La Margarita Awesome Gose Great Beer by Black Acre Brewing

This beer is a collboration between Black Acre and the La Margartia, an Indianapolisbeer bar and Mexican restaurant. This gose is made with agave worm salt, lime zest, adn coriander. For some reason the aroma of lime, salt, and coriander reminds me of Pica Limon “candy” from childhood. This beer also has a slight smoky aroma to it. The flavor is a sour with malt and slat to balance. This is a deliciously unique beer.

In addition to the 10 gose beers above I also tried the 6 beers below. For my notes on the following beers, please see my articles on Menuism or the Huffington Post.

• Leipziger Gose by Gasthaus & Gosebrauerei Bayerischer Bahnhof,
• The Kimmie, The Yink & The Holy Gose Ale by Anderson Valley Brewing Company
• Prairie Flare by Prairie Artisan Ales
• Golden Gate Gose by Almanac Beer Co.
• It Came from Beneath by Pine Street Brewing
• Gose Gone Wild by Stillwater Artisanal Beer

What are some of your favorite gose beers?

Disclosure: Free samples were provided by Anderson Valley Brewing Co (for the Holy Gose only), Pine Street, Black Acre Brewing, TwoDEEP Brewing, and Rhinegeist.

Update (August 15, 2016): Added the link to the Menuism article. Added the 3rd paragraph.