1
THE HISTORY OF GOSE
When asking a Gose-drinker about his favorite drink, as you can see his eyes light up. A well-matured Gose is for the expert, who explored and got to know the nuances in taste at length, above everything, he calls it his “Göttergetränk” [“Gods Drink”]. Tasty and thirst-quenching, seemingly sour but full-flavored and at the same time stimulating digestion, this golden bright drink invites to cheerful pleasure.
—Otto Kröber, Die Geschichte der Gose und die Chronik der Gosenschänke Leipzig-Eutritzsch (Translated by Adept Content Solutions)
“Gose” is German and is pronounced “GO-zuh.” The name is derived from the river that flows through Goslar, which is named Gose. The Gose name is not derived from the Flemish-named gueuze, since Gose predates gueuze by many hundreds of years (Unger 2004). As with most of the classic beer styles, it is difficult to say exactly when a beer style originated or what that original beer looked, smelled, and tasted like. This may be especially true of Gose, as Gose has a lineage that extends well into the hallowed past before most beer styles. Another thing that makes it hard to know what Gose was like traditionally is that today’s Gose is not the Gose of many, many years ago. We need to define which iteration of Gose we are talking about.
Which of these Gose traditions are we defining? The early ale brewed in Goslar (between the years AD 950 and the 1300s);1 the Gose beer of 1470;2 the Leipzig Goses of the 1600s, 1700s, and 1800s (d’Elvert 1870); the Gose reborn after World War II that died in 1966; the Gose that was again resurrected in the 1980s; or the modern Gose-style beers that we are brewing today? We will discuss all these iterations in as much detail as we can and I will try to categorize them into three general periods: Gose brewed in the Middle Ages (AD 500–1500), those produced in the early modern times (1500–1750), and the Gose of today (1750 to present).
Gose beer was first brewed more than 1,000 years ago in Goslar, a small town that sprung up near the silver mines of the Rammelsberg mountain in central northern Germany. That beer was probably significantly different from the Gose we are drinking today. With the exception of the kettle, almost all the brewing equipment used 1,000 years ago would have been made of wood. My opinion, based on many sources, is that the original Goslar beer was almost certainly spontaneously fermented or fermented from a mixed wild culture that had taken up residency in the wood vessels used for brewing and fermenting the beer. There are many citations that state Gose was fermented without pitching yeast—these citations are from the twelfth until well into the sixteenth century, and some from as late as the nineteenth century (H.S. Rich & Co. [1903] 1974, 32).
Generally speaking, the brewing process prior to the 1400s was very different from that of today. Sparging and boiling were sometimes not even part of the process. Many brewers did not sparge the mash. In some cases brewers did not boil the wort at all, and in other cases boiling the wort was not for very long. The benefits of boiling the wort were not well understood and it was a labor and resource intensive process (keep in mind that any fuel used to fire the boil had to be harvested and prepared by hand). In areas like Goslar, where there was an abundance of metals from mining, copper vessels came into use earlier than in some other areas—in those areas boiling was probably more common.
We can be almost positive Gose was originally brewed with gruit or some sort of spice mix and not with hops (Corran 1975). Around roughly AD 500 to 1000 not only were hops not yet used in brewing, but there were laws that decreed brewers use gruit in their beers (Unger 2004). Additionally, it was the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto III, that held the Gruitrecht (“Gruit Right”) which allowed ONLY him or his direct agents to levy tax on the sale and use of gruit. It would have been only the very poor or the exceedingly foolish brewer that would transgress against a king who was also the Holy Roman Emperor (Unger 2004). One can draw the conclusion that these early beers from Goslar would have been fermented by multiple kinds of organisms, probably several strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as well as lactic acid bacteria, Brettanomyces, other wild yeast, and probably even a bit of Acetobacter if the beer was left to age.
Figure 1.1. Portrait of Otto III—a detail from Gospel of Emperor Otto III, The Enthroned Ruler, Master of the Reichenau School. Reproduction part of a collection by The Yorck Project, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Later iterations of Gose would count on lactic acid bacteria before and during fermentation to create its sourness. By the 1800s, brewers were adding extraneous powder possibly to acidify the beer that today we sour with Lactobacillus bacteria in the brewhouse (Frey et al. 1999). Many of the ingredients have changed over time as well (Hornsey 2003). Gruit or herbs, spruce, hops, and coriander have all been used at one point—or not. The malt was wheat, barley, and in some cases some oats—all used in differing proportions during different time periods of the beer’s evolution. This includes early versions that were 100 percent wheat.3 Malt would have been dried over a source of heat, potentially making it smoky, or the malt could have been dried in the air with no heat, leaving it very light in color but without the bready or toasty flavors we associate with malt today. Finally, of course, there were different water sources when Gose was brewed in different towns.
THE LEGEND OF GOSE
Legend has it that during the rule of the Saxon Emperor, Otto the Great, a hunting party, led by his most favored hunter Ramm, was tracking a deer through the forest in the foothills of the Harz mountains. The terrain became steep and the forest thick, so Ramm decided to dismount from his horse and proceed on foot. He tied his horse off to a nearby tree and went on to pursue the deer for some time. In Ramm’s absence his horse became agitated and nervously pawed at the ground. In repeatedly doing so the horse unearthed a large nugget of metallic ore. Upon Ramm’s return he found the nugget, which he immediately took to his king. By the color and weight of the ore, King Otto could tell it was of great value. He called for his miners to be sent out to investigate. The miners found silver and other metals of such quality and in such quantity as had never before been seen in all of Christendom. The Emperor was so pleased that he named the mountain Rammelsberg after Ramm, and he declared the stream that ran nearby the mines to be named after Ramm’s wife, Gosa (Goslarer Museum 2017). The town that grew up around the stream was called Goslar and the beer that was brewed from the stream’s water was called Gose.
Although I do like the legend that Gose was named after Ramm’s wife, there is another more plausible explanation: the name Goslar came into use in the tenth century. If you take a close look at the name Goslar, you can see that this name is composed of two syllables. The first is “gos-” or “gose-.” Gose is of Germanic origin and means “fast flowing, or bubbling water.” The second syllable “-lar” means “a vacancy in a forest, at which one can settle and graze.” That’s how it works out to Goslar, which aptly translates as “a camp or settlement at the fast flowing stream.”5
Figure 1.2. The city of Goslar lies in the modern day Goslar district (shaded) of Lower Saxony. Leipzig lies over 90 miles (112 km) to the southeast.
Figure 1.3. The Gose river meandering its way toward Goslar.
Today it is the Abzucht river that runs through Goslar, not the river Gose. There are street names in the town of Goslar that suggest this was not always the case: the Gosestraße (Gose Street) and An der Gose (On the Gose). At one time the Gose river had five arms that ran through Goslar before they met with the Abzucht. In the early days of Goslar’s development, it was deemed that the Gose river would supply the fresh or potable water to the mills, breweries, and residences and the Abzucht river would be used to take away waste products from the town and mining operations.6 This of course made the waters of the Abzucht contaminated and unsuitable for brewing. This is just one more way we know it was the Gose river and not the Abzucht river that was used for brewing Gose beers. Over time the arms of the Gose were diverted and conjoined as needed and eventually these canals were covered over. In later years the canals were replaced by a piping system to supply fresh water to the local community (Brinkmannn 1925). The Gose river canal and piping system for fresh water lasted until the twentieth century before being replaced with a different water supply.
We know that the Gose river’s water was supplied to breweries and used in the brewing of Gose beer, thus, we can assume that both the town and its beer derive their names from the river Gose. And so, the town of Goslar—birthplace of Gose beer.
GOSLAR: THE TOWN AND ITS BEER
Archeological remains showcased at the Goslarer Museum show that humans have lived in and around the area of Goslar since the Stone Age over 5,500 ago. Excavations there found the remains of prey, including wooly rhinoceros and mammoth, reindeer, wild horse, bear, wolf, and bison; all with obvious signs of being butchered.
Figure 1.4. Coat of Arms of the district of Goslar. Image by Patzi / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.
To give some historical perspective, one thousand years ago there were barely 10 million people on the entire planet (as opposed to the 7.5 billion there are today). In central Europe at that time civilization was struggling since the failure of the Roman Empire’s central government, which had mostly dissolved. Feudalism came to control most of what little government there was. There were no schools, records were not kept for most things, the vast majority of people (even most of the aristocracy) could not read or write, and the invention of the printing press was a distant 400 years in the future. Wars and invasions were an almost constant threat, and life was short. All but the youngest (or strongest) of beers were a least slightly sour (Nelson 2005). It is around this time that Gose was probably first brewed, although it is hard to be certain exactly when due to the lack of early records.
According to the Goslarer Museum, Otto the Great first founded the town of Goslar in the tenth century after the discovery of silver deposits in the nearby mountain of Rammelsberg. The mining operations for silver, copper, and lead brought the town great wealth, recognition, and status. By the eleventh century the Salian emperors built the Kaiserpfalz (Imperial Palace) in Goslar. This palace became the sometime residence for the German kings and Holy Roman emperors. These were turbulent times in northern Europe, but even during the greatest difficulties one needs respite. Goslar and its surroundings was where the Salian royalty would take a hiatus. It is said that the (very short-lived) Emperor Otto III (b. 980, d. 1002) sang the praises of the Gose beer from Goslar, thereby supporting the claim that Gose has been around for at least 1,000 years.
Throughout the Middle Ages Goslar was a very important town. The wealth and status that Goslar gained brought it the distinction of being an imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire and as such the city was granted some autonomy, special high status, and the right to mint its own currency.
Eventually, mining production declined as the silver ran out, and as the wealth declined so did Goslar’s fortunes. Goslar is tucked away up against the Harz Mountains and away from any of the main trade routes. Without the mines Goslar’s population gradually shrank. For a time brewing exports helped buoy up Goslar’s economy, but eventually brewing fell on hard times too and Goslar settled into being just another small town in Saxony. Today, Goslar is one of the better preserved historic towns in Germany. Many of its buildings date from the late Middle Ages.
GOSE IN GOSLAR
If sources are to be believed, Gose is one of the oldest distinct beer styles known. It is thought to have first been brewed late in the tenth century. The earliest record of beer being brewed in Goslar is in 1181 (in a medieval manuscript of the city’s archives) and again in 1239 (Albers 2017; Doebner 1882, 21). The oldest surviving document from outside of Goslar that makes specific mention of a Goslar beer comes from the monastery of Ilsenburg and is dated March 23, 1332.7 The monastery had been built on royal lands deeded in 995 by Otto III. Elysynaburg, as the site was called before being converted to the Ilsenburg monastery in 1030, was the sometime residence of Otto III when he was not waging war to keep his rule intact.8
In 1381, in order to curb a flood of imported beers, the town council of Hamburg set a tax rate for foreign beers that could be as much as four times that of local beers. It appears that this tax increase in foreign beers was a result of Gose’s popularity, and the record mentions Goslar beer is mentioned as the most popular beer imported to Hamburg during the 1300s (Unger 2004). Finally, the beer is mentioned by the “Gose” name in the Goslar city council records of 1470.
With Goslar’s great wealth and special status we can be certain that beer was being brewed in the city some time shortly after its founding. Although we cannot be certain of the style’s existence prior to its mention in the 1400s, we can be sure that the antecedents of the 1470 “Gose” beer were being brewed in and around the Goslar area long before that. From this perspective, a claim of a Goslar style of beer (i.e., Gose) being brewed 1,000 years ago does seem well within the realm of possibility.
At the height of Gose’s popularity in Goslar during the mid-sixteenth century there were 387 houses that had been granted licenses to brew (Brinkmann 1925).9 The beer had become a phenomenon. “By the end of the 1500s, the entire Harz region was covered by Gose fever and the beer was an export hit of the city.”10 As the style’s popularity grew, the Gose name was used not just in Goslar but also in reference to beers being brewed by the same or similar recipe in other cities. The cities of Wernigerode, Quedlinburg, Blankenburg, Halberstadt, Halle, Glauzig, Spören, and (of course) Leipzig all had breweries that made a Gose. Sometimes these beers were just referred to as weissbier (white beer). That is, as opposed to the braunbier (brown beer) or Gerstenbier (beers made only with barley and no wheat) that were also produced in the region. Interestingly, during the height of Goslar’s Gose production and export, the brewing of braunbier and Gerstenbier was restricted to the early months of the year so as not to interfere with the brewing of Gose for export (McGregor and McGregor 2017).
By the 1800s there was no more Gose being brewed in Goslar. I have read many reasons for why brewing stopped in Goslar even at a time when Gose was seeing impressive growth in Leipzig. The decline in Goslar’s brewing started in the mid-seventeenth century, brought on in part by the Thirty Year’s War, which was one of the longest and most destructive wars in human history. During the 1600s and 1700s there was a shift away from beer to the drinking of wine (for the rich) and spirits (for the poor). The introduction of coffee and tea also played a part in the decline of beer’s ubiquity in everyday life. Then, in the mid-eighteenth century, the French occupied Goslar during the Seven Years’ War. The brewing houses were ruined by the long occupation of the wine-drinking French. The Goslar currency was depressed and the devaluation of circulating money forced the brewers to further reduce the quality of their beer, which resulted in less and less exported Gose. In the 1770s there was a brief revival of Gose, but then in 1780 came the harshest blow. That year there was a great fire that claimed many of the remaining breweries in Goslar. By 1790 there were only 60 breweries operating. The Napoleonic Wars started in the early part of the 1800s; by their end in 1815 Gose production in Goslar and in many of the towns to the southeast had all but died. By 1840 brewing had ceased altogether in Goslar. Even after the demise of Gose brewing in Goslar, the Gose name lived on and remained in use throughout the region, from naming streets to naming the beer being brewed in surrounding towns (Brinkmann 1925).
Figure 1.5. Brauerei von Fritz Natermann helped revive Gose in the town of Goslar from 1935 until it closed in 1939. Photo courtesy Odin Paul, Brauhaus Goslar.
Gose in Goslar had a brief revival in the years 1935–1939 when it was brewed by the brewery Fritz Natermann. In 1939 the brewery closed, and the old brewery building was turned into a movie theatre and later into a supermarket.11 Oddly, today in Goslar you will not find any mention of the town’s former brewing glory. In a tour of Goslar you will find no plaques commemorating a building holding a former brewery; there is no mention of beer in the entire Goslar museum; and when I asked the museum curator and her assistant about the 387 breweries that once existed there all I got were raised eyebrows, shaking heads, and an answer of, “I’ve no idea”.
GOSE OUT OF GOSLAR: THE 1500S THROUGH THE EARLY 1900S
During the sixteenth century Gose’s popularity increased and breweries in the surrounding areas began to copy the style. During the Late Middle Ages beers were often affiliated with the towns they were brewed in; thus, besides the Goslarian Gose, there was the Wernigeröder Gose, Aschersleber Gose, Blankenburger Gose, Halberstädter Gose, and others (Kröber 1912). By the 1600s the center for Gose brewing was shifting from Goslar to the town of Leipzig (around 90 miles southeast of Goslar). Gose’s popularity continued to grow in Leipzig and the surrounding areas even as its production waned in its home town of Goslar. By the mid-1800s the area in and around Leipzig boasted over 80 Gosenschänke, or Gose taverns, and Gose was the most popular beer in the region.12 The people of Leipzig were enthralled by the tart, refreshing taste of Gose.
Leipzig
The town of Leipzig was first documented in AD 1015 in the chronicles of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg (b. 975, d. 1018). Leipzig is located about 90 miles southwest of Berlin where the Pleisse, Parthe, and White Elster rivers converge. Leipzig sits at the intersection of two very important medieval trade routes. By 1165 Leipzig had been endowed with city and market privileges. Its importance eventually led to Leipzig becoming one of the leading centers of learning, music, and publishing in Europe. As early as 1499 a city council resolution allowed some of the taverns of Eutritzsch (just on the northern outskirts of Leipzig) to serve the beer of Leipzig.
Figure 1.6. The Leipzig coat of arms. Image by Madden / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.
Eutritzsch and the Gosenschänke
Gose was the favorite drink of Prussian military commander Prince Leopold I of Anhalt-Dessau (b. 1676, d. 1747). Prince Leopold, nicknamed “the Old Dessauer,” was well known throughout Germany. At that time Gose was very popular in the area around Anhalt and was brewed in many towns of that region. In 1712 Leopold was having Gose brewed on his royal estate in Glauzig. The beer was known as Gludscher Gose (the Gose from Glauzig) and Leopold served it to his royal friends (Keil 1872). The beer garnered accolades and continued to spread quickly with the help of the royal recommendation.
During his travels in 1738, Prince Leopold visited the city of Leipzig. To get there, he travelled through what was then the small town of Eutritzsch just to the north of Leipzig (today Eutritzsch is considered part of Leipzig). Leopold stopped for a beer in the local tavern owned by his old friend Gieseke. Gieseke had served as a soldier under Leopold in the Prussian regiment of Halberstadt. Gieseke’s soldiering had so impressed the prince that after Gieseke’s service the prince asked him to become his personal valet. After many years of service to the prince, Gieseke and his wife (whom he met during his time as Leopold’s valet) moved together to Eutritzsch, where they bought the tavern on Heerstrasse (Kröber 1912).
Leopold had been looking forward to visiting his friend, but when the prince arrived to drink in Gieseke’s tavern, the beer was most definitely not to his liking. He is said to have spat out the beer together with a number of expletives. The barkeep apologized, but explained that they were not allowed to serve a different beer due to local laws controlling what beers a tavern got and how much. Every tavern within a designated distance of Leipzig’s center was only allowed to serve beer selected for them by the Leipzig city council. Prince Leopold was outraged, and he promised to send to Gieseke a few barrels of the Gose brewed at his estate in Glauzig. Soon, as promised, Leopold’s Glauzig Gose arrived. When presented to the Leipzig town council, Glauzig Gose’s flavors and Prince Leopold’s pressure persuaded the council to grant permission for the tavern in Eutritzsch to serve the new Gose beer. Once Gieseke was awarded permission to serve the Prince’s Gose, Gieseke renamed his tavern. Now he would call it the Gosenschänke (the Gose Tavern).
Figure 1.7. The Gose Tavern of Otto Kröber in Eutritzsch, Leipzig. Note the Ritterguts Döllnitz casks of Gose being delivered.
Figure 1.8. Inside the Gosenschänke. Note the longneck bottles of Gose.
Soon Gieseke’s business began to take off. People in Leipzig learned about the special beer being served in a tavern in Eutritzsch. People from all walks of life began trekking to the tavern where Gose was served; students, residents, visitors, politicians, and craftsmen—all made the trip to visit the Gosenschänke (Kröber 1912). The trek to Eutritzsch became a highlight of visiting the town of Leipzig. (Even today there are tours of the Gose tavern trail, where you can stop at selected taverns along the way and drink Gose.) With the success of Gieseke’s Gosenschänke, other taverns began to ask for and serve Gose.
In 1781, Udolf Audenar Keitzinger published a song, “The Gose-Brother and the Return to Eutritzsch,” which describes the Gose-brothers will never become extinct:
Many have died
but Eutritzsch’s (drinking) army
is not ruined yet
New sprouts come endlessly
every year continuously
who can take in the
soothing Gose beer!
—Excerpt from “The Gose-brother and the return to Eutritzsch,” by Udolf Audenar Keitzinger (1781), quoted in Otto Kröber, Die Geschichte der Gose und die Chronik der Gosenschänke Leipzig-Eutritzsch (Translated by Adept Content Solutions) (Leipzig, 1912).
Throughout the 1700s Gose’s popularity continued to grow in and around Leipzig. But by the end of the Napoleonic Wars things looked pretty bleak for Gose. Many of the breweries in the small towns of Anhalt shuttered their doors and Gose production in Goslar diminished to a trickle. In 1812, during the closing days of Napoleon’s German campaign, a Leipzig merchant named Johann Gottlieb Goedecke acquired the Döllnitz manor estate. On the manor grounds there was a small wheat and brown beer brewery. Goedecke wanted to try his hand at brewing Gose, but his attempt at a satisfactory brew did not find the right mix of ingredients and know-how. In 1824, Goedecke was able to entice brewer Johann Philipp Ledermann away from an unnamed brewery in Goslar to his estate brewery just outside of Leipzig. Ledermann was brought in to improve the brewing situation. He was said to have directly supervised every brew and soon he was able to get the brewery moving in the right direction. Late in 1824 the brewery began to produce Rittergut Döllnitz Gose (Rittergut is a German word for “manor house”). Ledermann worked there until his passing in 1852. After Ledermann’s death his wife, Frau Ledermann, took over supervision of the brewery and she ran it until her passing in 1883.13 By the early 1880s the Ritterguts Brauerei Döllnitz had managed to corner a significant share of Leipzig’s Gose beer market. It had displaced the Anhalt Goses almost completely. And although several other breweries tried to imitate and brew Gose themselves, the Ritterguts Döllnitz Gose remained the market leader.14
Figure 1.9. Brewmaster Joannes Philipp Ledermann of Döllnitz brewery.
Figure 1.10. A 1908 advertisement for the Ritterguts Brewery in Leipzig. Image courtesy of Shelton Brothers Inc.
An important reason that the Döllnitz brewery was so successful was the self-sufficient manner in which it operated. Barley and wheat were cultivated on the manor’s own 900 acres, then malted and dried in their own malthouse. The coal required for heating in the malt house and brewhouse was extracted from a pit on the manor property. Even the horses that were pulling the carriages filled with beer to Leipzig were raised on the manor property. Another reason for their success was that the Döllnitz brewery intentionally limited its production to keep demand high. Through most of the latter half of the nineteenth century the brewery produced about ~8,522 bbl. (10,000 hL) of Gose per year, much of that in bottles (Frey et al. 1999).15
During this time the Gose taverns played an integral part in the beer’s life. It was here that the beer was not just served, but completed its fermentation and was packaged for sale. Although Gose was brewed at the brewery, after fermentation started the young beer was quickly transferred to wooden barrels and shipped off to the taverns while still fermenting. The Gose would go through its initial fermentation in those barrels. Toward the end of fermentation the beer would be transferred to its unique longneck bottles, where it would age for a few more days and develop carbonation before being served. The fermenting bottle would remain uncorked. The reason for the special longneck bottles was that the yeast (and/or other fermenting organisms) would form a plug at the top of the long neck as the final fermentation was finishing up and act as a stopper (Frey et al. 1999). This bottle conditioning took about 12 days (somewhat faster in the summer and somewhat slower in the winter months).
Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, and even into the early years of the twentieth century, Leipzig was known as the Gosestadt (Gose City).16 At the height of Gose’s popularity there were more than 80 Gose taverns in Leipzig alone.17 There was a whole culture surrounding the drinking of Gose. Terms like gemütlichkeit (cozy, conviviality) and stammtische (a table for regular customers) took on larger meaning when applied to the Gosebrüdern, or Gose brotherhood. Members of the loosely associated Gosebrüdern were said to be able to distinguish those bottles of Gose stored by the cellar wall, where it was cooler, from those bottles stored in the center of the room.
By the beginning of the 1920s Gose’s popularity had started to decline again. Pilsner beer, due to easier storage as a lager, was steadily encroaching on the Gose market. The First World War was hard on all German brewers and it seemed to be especially hard on those older styles of beer that were regional specialties. After the war, Gose’s popularity was a shadow of its former self.
GOSE IN POST-WAR GERMANY
In the late 1930s the Ritterguts Brauerei Döllnitz was the last production brewery still making Gose. In 1945, after the Second World War, Germany was divided in two, with Ritterguts Brauerei Döllnitz falling in the Soviet Occupation zone where supplies were rationed and priority for grain was to be used for bread. The communist government took over Döllnitz manor and the Ritterguts Brauerei Döllnitz. It was first nationalized and then control was given to Volkseigener Betrieb (VEB) Sachsenbräu. The very large state-owned VEB Sachsenbräu had no interest in running a miniature brewery. This was the final blow for Gose. Soon after, the brewery was shuttered and dismantled. There was no interest whatsoever in preserving an old Leipzig tradition, especially not by the government who considered Gose and its culture as “petty, bourgeois and backwards thinking” (Frey et al. 1999, 52). Gose culture, with its strong regional ties, did not fit in with the concept of the homeland being “the socialist world system [of mother Russia]” (ibid., 52). After the Second World War and through the 1950s, it was only a few very passionate brewers that kept the Gose style alive in just a handful of small pubs. In 1949, Leipzig brewmaster Friedrich Wurzler, using the old Döllnitz recipe, started making Gose at his brewery.
Wurzler had worked at the Ritterguts Brauerei Döllnitz and was the son-in-law of their last brewmaster, who, as fortune would have it, left his brewing notebook to Wurzler. Soon, Wurzler’s tiny brewery at Arthur-Hoffmann Strasse 94 in Leipzig was the only brewery making Gose. At that time there were only about 18 pubs in Leipzig that even wanted Gose. In 1958, Karl Matthes closed the most famous of the Gose taverns, the Ohne Bedenken. By the early 1960s there were just a couple of pubs that still took Gose. In 1966 the Wurzler brewery was closed when the brewer, Guido Pfnister (Wurzler’s stepson), died of a heart attack while gardening. Another small brewery, Brauerei Ermisch, considered taking over the Gose production; they even went so far as to take possession of Pfnister’s brewing notebook. Unfortunately, their enthusiasm was short lived and soon they decided against taking on such an unusual beer. In the end the brewing notebook also disappeared. The notebook might have been lost or it might have been accidentally destroyed—the people at Brauerei Ermisch were unable to produce the last known notes on how to brew Gose.
Figure 1.11. Leipziger Gose label from Friedrich Wurzler Brewery.
On March 31, 1966 the very last barrel of Wurzler Gose was delivered to the last remaining patron, the Hotel Fröhlich. The hotel still carried on the tradition of filling the longneck bottles from the barrel; and so, the hotel served bottled Gose for a short time, but was closed and demolished in 1968 (Frey et. al. 1999).18 Again, Gose died.
Without a Concern
One of the most famous Gose taverns in Leipzig was Carl Cajeri’s Ohne Bedenken (which translates to “without concern”). Carl opened the Gosenstube (Gose room) in 1899, but moved to a new location in the early 1900s. The current Ohne Bedenken was opened in 1905 and run by Carjeri until 1920. It survived the pre-war, First World War, and post-war difficulties—all very difficult times in German history. Around 1921, August Kurz became the owner and served guests there for ten years until 1932. The tavern was bought by Karl Matthes in 1936 and he ran it until its final day in 1958, some 53 years after its opening. Karl Matthes passed away in a retirement home in Leipzig in 1981; sadly, he did not live to see Gose’s rebirth.
That might have been the end of the Gose story if not for one gentleman by the name of Lothar Goldhahn. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that without Herr Goldhahn’s zeal for this beer style, Gose would have disappeared forever. Luckily for the beer drinking world, in 1985 Goldhahn read an article in a local newspaper about the Gose culture in Leipzig’s past. He had the idea to purchase and reopen the old Gosenschänke named Ohne Bedenken.
Goldhahn’s objective was to restore the tavern to its former glory as a Gose haven—to restore it as it had been in the in the early 1900s—but the job would not be an easy one. A large part of the beer garden had been damaged in bombings during the Second World War. After the Communist party’s takeover of Germany in 1949, the Ohne Bedenken had fallen on hard times. This culminated with its closure in 1958, after which the tavern was stripped, and the rooms left empty for the spiders to move in. Eventually, around 1960, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) government converted the tavern into a cultural center. The great tiled stove was thrown out and the main room was separated into two smaller rooms by a dividing wall. A television set was put up in the front room (a rare commodity at that time). People had to pay a small entrance fee to come in off the streets and watch the television.
In the beer garden a small stage had been set up to host concerts, but it was infrequently used. The cultural center never became very popular. Later, a small library was set up, and then some time after that a small X-ray examination room. In the 1970s the building was abandoned and left completely empty. Nothing was left of the once convivial atmosphere that inhabited the tavern.
In the late 1970s, Lothar Goldhahn was working in a bookbindery, but he had been educated as a “gastronomical host and hotel economist.” He wanted to open a tavern of his own. He had been looking for, and hoped to find, a pub with a special character. In the autumn of 1984 Goldhahn applied for a business license to run a privately owned restaurant. This was quite a provocative move during the era of a state-planned, state-owned, state-run economy. Private ventures were not the norm. But Goldhahn had a leg up because he knew the rules well. He knew that in the GDR economic success must always go hand in hand with politics, and he had become a member of the liberal party of the GDR as his special way in. When the party’s newspaper, the Sächsische Tagesblatt, reported on Goldhahn’s plan, it mentioned that he had the support of the trade and supply division of the municipal administration . . . and that he would be spending about 3,000 hours of his own time refurbishing the long abandoned building. Goldhahn had decided to reopen the Gosenschänke.
Over the next two years, Goldhahn collected everything that he could find about Gose: advertisement signs, postcards, books, bottles, glasses, coasters, menus, ashtrays; everything. He hoped this would help him get a better understanding of the Gose beer and form the better part of his new endeavor’s decorations. One day in 1985, Goldhahn went to a swap meet looking for Gose memorabilia and there he met Dr. Hartmut Hennebach (who had been a biologist before the end of the war and the rise of the GDR). Hennebach had a collection of things related to the history of Leipzig and in among them Goldhahn found some interesting items related to Gose. The two men got to talking about Leipzig and its great history and soon they were friends. Goldhahn, assisted by Hennebach, began doing extensive research and they were able, through records and interviews, to gather up enough information to develop what they felt was a traditional Gose recipe.
Goldhahn felt strongly that the Gose should be brewed in Leipzig, but no local brewery wanted anything to do with this odd, top-fermented sour beer. He had to look further afield. In 1985, he was able to convince the Schultheiss Berliner-Weisse-Brauerei in East Berlin to brew a Gose for his establishment. In a tasting held some days after the first test brew was finished, a gathering of a few of the Gosebrüdern and other “old school” experienced Gose drinkers declared the new beer a real Gose. Production brewing started in early 1986.
After the tavern’s opening in mid-May of 1986 enthusiasm quickly spread. One commentator complained in the Goslar town newspaper, “Why didn’t we come up with the idea to revive our old exported beer Gose, and attract large number of tourists (Frey et al. 1999)?”
The Schultheiss Berliner-Weisse-Brauerei stopped producing the Gose in 1988 because (they said) of the need to prepare for the 750th anniversary of the city of Berlin. Goldhahn had to revert to selling just Berliner weisse at his tavern (sometimes adulterated with salt and coriander to mimic a Gose), but Goldhahn still was adamant that there was a need for real Gose, not just another beer with the Gose name. Goldhahn and Hennebach became partners of sorts early the next year, and in 1990 Hennebach was made the manager of the Ohne Bedenken tavern, but fairly early on they fell into disagreement about how the business should be run (Frey et al. 1999). Eventually, it was agreed that Hennebach would rent the Ohne Bedenken from Goldhahn and that Goldhahn would concentrate on the beer. In 1991, Goldhahn was able to purchase the small Löwenbrauerei in Dahlen (about 25 miles from Leipzig) and he started brewing his Gose again there. In November of 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and East Germany was again open and free.
In the early 1990s, after decades of oppression of Saxon culture by the Communist Party, a rebirth of the Free State of Saxon was creating a boom in anything and everything regional. For a time, Goldhahn’s Ohne Bedenken flourished. It became so popular that during the mid-1990s it was impossible to get a seat without a reservation. It was so busy, in fact, that the tavern was able to expand the beer garden to its original size—“Leipzig’s most beautiful beer garden” raved the Leipzig newspapers. But by 1995 economic pressures caused Goldhahn to close the little brewery in Dahlen and the tavern had to find someone new to contract brew its Gose. The Andreas Schneider brewery in Weissenburg took up that challenge. Today, not much has changed at the Ohne Bedenken since the mid 1990s. Hennebach felt a certain obligation to represent the 1990s when Gose became a Leipzig staple again.
Enthusiasm for Gose Grows
Thomas Schneider (of the Andreas Schneider brewery) became so intrigued by the Gose beer style that in 1999 he decided to convert the derelict former Bavarian train station in Leipzig, the Bayerischer Bahnhof, into a Gose brewery.19 The train station had once been part of Germany’s most important north-south routes, the Saxony to Bavaria railroad line. The current Bayerischer Bahnhof pub and brewery houses a 15 hL copper brewhouse, a large bar, a bierstube, several private rooms, a performance hall, and a beer garden. Once the defunct train station was turned into the Bayerischer Bahnhof Brewery, people began to take notice. The Bayerischer Bahnhof Brewery now has a yearly production of about 2000 hL (~1700 bbl.), of which about 90 percent is consumed on the premises.
Figure 1.12. Bayerischer Bahnhof Brewery’s brewmaster, Matthias Richter, and the author, Fal Allen, at Bayerischer Bahnhof Brewery, 2017.
In 1999, homebrewer-turned-professional, Tilo Jänichen, and Adolf Goedecke (great-great-grandson of the original Ritterguts Brauerei Döllnitz owner, Johann Gottlieb Goedecke) formed a business venture to brew the Ritterguts Gose again. They had no brewery, since the original had been dismantled after the Second World War. Jänichen and Goedecke decided that the beer would be produced according to the Ritterguts Gose profile from 1824, and they were lucky enough to find a few old bottles of beer from which they could culture yeast and Lactobacillus to use in the fermentation (McGregor and McGregor 2017). They started brewing at the Microbrewery Leipzig, but soon it became apparent that they needed more capacity to keep up with demand. They tried several other breweries, before finally settling on the Brauerei Reichenbrand in Chemnitz, just east of Leipzig, to make their Gose.
In 2009, the Brauhaus Goslar opened under the direction of brewmaster Odin Paul. Brauhaus Goslar is now the producer of the new Goslarian beer. The brewery can be found at Goslar’s marketplace, just few minutes’ walk from the famous Kaiserpfalz. Brauhaus Goslar makes both a light (helles) and a dark (dunkel) version of their Gose. The Gose they make is not sour. Brewmaster Paul Odin claims that the Gose from Goslar never was sour, but there is ample documentation to the contrary (discussed later in this book). Odin does add coriander and salt to spice up Brauhaus Goslar’s version of Gose.
THE WORLD DISCOVERS GOSE
In the mid-1990s a few people outside of Saxony started taking notice of this unusual style, Gose beer. Randy Mosher talked about Gose in a presentation he gave in 1995 at a “Home Brew U” conference put on by Charles and Rose Ann Finkel (the owners of Merchant du Vin and the Pike Place Brewery). I was at that presentation, but the idea of a salty, sour German wheat beer was so outlandish that no one gave it much consideration. Remember, back in 1995 we were just beginning to grasp the IPA style (with varying degrees of success). Beer writer and guru Michael Jackson wrote about Gose in two separate articles. The first was in October of 1996 in the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) magazine, What’s Brewing, and it was titled “Salty Trail of Germany’s Link with Wild Beer.”20 The next was in 2000 for his Beer Hunter website and was titled “Going for Gose.”21 Both these articles chronicled the recent rebirth of Gose. Randy and Michael teamed up in 1997 in Chicago to do a presentation on Gose, sahti, and Grodziskie—Michael talked (and digressed) while Randy brewed beer.22
Figure 1.13. Brauhaus Goslar’s Helles Gose.
But even with luminaries the likes of Michael Jackson and Randy Mosher applauding the style, not many brewers outside of Saxony showed much interest in Gose. If you look through the beer and brewing books published in the 1990s and early 2000s there is scant mention of Gose. In 2004 Randy Mosher included the style in his Radical Brewing book. A year later in 2005, Lars Marius Garshol wrote in his excellent blog, “There seems to be only three Gose beers in existence today: two from Leipzig and one from a US microbrewer.”23 Ron Pattinson wrote a more in-depth blog post on Gose in 2007. He outlined the Leipzig history of Gose and his blog post got the attention of a few more brewers.24 In 2008 Lars again wrote about Gose, this time he was able to report, “It [Gose] is extremely rare today. RateBeer lists nine Gose beers, 5 in Germany and 4 in the US, all of which are hard to find.”25
Even into the early part of the 2010s, Gose was still almost unknown in the beer industry both in Germany and in the USA. In early 2012 Westbrook Brewing released their interpretation of a Leipzig Gose. It was the first release of a Gose that got any real traction in the USA, and for many people (especially on America’s East Coast) this was their first introduction to the style. In October of that same year Dr. Hennebach passed away and Gose lost one of its most ardent advocates. Without Dr. Hennebach and the help he gave to Lothar Goldhahn, and later his fervent almost singular support of the style, Gose might have been relegated to the beer scrap heap like so many other unusual beer styles that have been lost over the centuries.
Within a few years of Dr. Hennebach’s passing the beer landscape would begin to see a slight shift. The international craft beer obsession with IPAs would start to wane (albeit very slowly) and brewers would begin to seek out things other than the next new hop. Brewers and consumers started to become fascinated with sour beers and this slight shift would turn into a full blown movement. Gose would ride this wave from the brink of extinction to common place. Gose’s popularity has been driven by many factors: drinkability, being a great palate for other flavors, by consumers’ desires for “something new,” and by ease of production (well, ease relative to other styles of sour beer at least).
Figure 1.14. The Gosenschenke Ohne Bedenken, Menckestraße 5, in the Gohlis neighborhood of Leipzig, Germany.
During my trip to Leipzig in 2017, I sought out the Holy Grail of Gose, the Gosenschenke Ohne Bedenken. It has resided in the same location for over a hundred years. The outside looks a bit modern, but the interior remains pretty much the same; the beer garden out back is still very popular during the summer months and consistently wins awards for being one of the best in Germany. In my bad German I ordered a Gose and something to eat. As I sat there pondering my next brewery visit, two older gentlemen at the next table finished their beer and said their goodbyes to the bartender. As they were about to leave one of them turned to me and asked in English, “What do you think of the beer?” (Yes, it was that obvious that I was not a native German speaker.) I replied that I liked it very much, that I had come all the way from California to drink a Gose here at the Ohne Bedenken and that I was not disappointed. His face broke into a big smile and he beamed, “I am the brewer here.” I did not know that Ohne Bedenken had a brewer or a brewery. The Ohne Bedenken’s new brewer was Edgar Schmidke, and he told me that up until about six months earlier the Gose they served had been made by Ritterguts Brauerei Döllnitz brewery. Edgar said that he had been coming to the Ohne Bedenken for many years. He was a former hobby brewer and now a retiree following a career in engineering. He told me that over the years he had gotten to know the owner, chef, and staff. In early 2017, chef Jens Gröger asked him about helping him brew a Gose for them and Edgar had happily agreed, so they bought a small brewery and began making Gose specifically for the Gosenschenke Ohne Bedenken. And, once again, the Ohne Bedenken had its own beer. The beer is made using a sufficient amount of sour malt, sea salt, and coriander. It is mildly sour, soft yet effervescent, and very bready, with overtones of a German wheat beer. Drinking it was the first time that I fully understood what Napoleon and his troops had meant when he called Berliner weisse beer the “Champagne of the North.”
Figure 1.15. From left to right, Fal Allen (author), Edgar Schmidke (Ohne Bedenken brewer), and Andreas Heinz (Ohne Bedenken patron and Gose drinker).
The following day Edgar took me around to several other breweries, notably the Bayerischer Bahnhof and the Ratskeller (which opened in March of 2017). Both of these breweries make very nice renditions of Gose as well as several other traditional beer selections. It was nice to see that Leipzig is once again the home of Gose and I felt (in some small way) part of the Gosebrüdern, or Gose brethren.
As of September 2017, Rate Beer has over one thousand Goses listed. Gose is no longer just an unusual “Saxon niche product,” as called by the GDR. Gose-style beers are now being brewed all over the world: Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Today Gose has moved from the realm of near extinction to the realm of near ubiquity. So much so that you never know where you might find one. You might even stumble across a Gose (or two) on your travels through Perm, Russia, over 700 miles east of Moscow—and it would be an oak-smoked tomato Gose no less (fig. 1.16).
Figure 1.16. The backboard from a pub in Perm, Russia. #1 and #9 are both Gose beers. Photo courtesy of Lars Marius Garshol.
2 Goslar Council Regulations (Goslarer Ratsverordnungen) of 1470
3 Jürgen Reuß, “Die Goslarer Gose,” Bier aus eigener Küche (website), September 28, 2004, http://www.bierauseigenerkueche.de/Goslarer%20Gose.html.
4 Lars Marius Garshol, “Brewing koduõlu on Hiiumaa,” Larsblog, March 11, 2018, http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/386.html.
5 “An der Gose,” Goslarer Straßennamenkatalog [Goslar street name catalog], Goslar (website), copyright 2016, http://www.goslar.de/strassenverzeichnis/pdf/an_der_gose.pdf
6 “Thema: Gose oder Abzucht?”, comment thread, Goslarer Geschichten (website), http://www.goslarer-geschichten.de/showthread.php?891-Gose-oder-Abzucht.
7 “Die Geschichte der Gose,” Ritterguts Gose (website), copyright 2018, http://www.leipziger-gose.com/gose-geschichte.html.
8 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1911), s.v. “Otto III.”
9 Reuß, “Die Goslarer Gose” (see page 8, n. 3).
Brewing was different in those days and a right to brew did not mean you owned a brick-and-mortar brewery. Brewery space was often shared and a brewer not owning an actual brewery might take a turn using the equipment of the town council or of a shared brewery. Often a town had two or more shared kettles that would be moved from one location to another. But no matter the number of actual breweries, 387 licenses to brew was a lot.
10 “Goslarer Straßennamenkatalog - Stadtteil Goslar” [“Goslar street name catalog - Goslar district”]. http://www.goslar.de/strassenverzeichnis/goslar
11 “Die Geschichte der Gose,” (see page 14, n. 7).
12 Emily Monaco, “The Story of Gose, Germany’s Salty Coriander Beer,” Eater, October 30, 2015, https://www.eater.com/drinks/2015/10/30/9643780/gose-beer-germany.
13 Ron Pattinson, Leipzig Pub Guide “Leipziger Gose” (website), copyright 2011. https://www.europeanbeerguide.net/leippubs.htm#gose
14 “Die Geschichte der Gose,” (see page 14, n. 7).
15 To give the reader some perspective: during that same time Munich’s smaller breweries were producing about twice that annually and the bigger brewers were producing about 50 times that amount.
16 “Die Geschichte der Gose,” (see page 18, n. 7).
17 Michael Jackson, “Salty trail of Germany’s link with wild beer,” Beer Hunter (website), May 9, 2000, http://beerhunter.com/documents/19133-000844.html.
18 Pattinson, Leipzig Pub Guide, (see p. 24, n. 13).
19 Pattinson, Leipzig Pub Guide “Leipziger Gose,” (see p. 24, n. 13).
20 Michael Jackson, “Salty trail of Germany’s link with wild beer,” What’s Brewing, October 1, 1996.
21 Michael Jackson, “Going for Gose,” Beer Hunter, August 31, 2000, http://www.beerhunter.com/documents/19133-001353.html.
22 personal discussion with Randy Mosher, 2017
23 “Gose,” Larsblog, accessed June 14, 2018, http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/19.html.
24 Ron Pattinson, Leipzig Pub Guide “Leipziger Gose” (website), copyright 2011.
25 Randy Mosher, pers. comm., 2017.