International Happy Gose Day

Gose is a bit of an oddity in the beer world; both for its history of continually being right on the brink of extinction and for its slightly saline quality. It is a top-fermenting brew made up of wheat and barley with the scale often skewed slightly toward the wheat. A small amount of oats is some time also used.

In 1949, the tiny Friedrich Wurzler Brauerei opened at Leipzig; Friedrich Wurzler had worked at the Döllnitz brewery and had known the techniques for brewing gose. Before his death in the late 1950s, Wurzler passed the recipe to his stepson, Guido Pfnister.

What distinguishes a gose from a Berliner Weisse? It's primarily the addition of salt (though gose doesn't taste overwhelmingly salty) and coriander. Otherwise, both styles found in the U.S. market tend to be similarly light bodied, very low in alcohol (under 4 percent is typical), and lemony tart.