When it comes to refreshing beers, it’s pretty difficult to beat an ice-cold Gose. Pronounced “Gose-uh”, this beer style (like many) comes from Germany. Specifically, the city of Goslar. It’s a top-fermented wheat ale known for its tart, citrus flavor that’s accentuated by the addition of salt and (often times) coriander. Traditional Gose beers from the city got their salty flavor from the high level of salinity in the water — these days it’s added later.
Whether or not additional fruit flavors are added, Gose-style beers are crisp, tart, and perfectly salty. Exactly the type of beer you want to drink on a hot summer day.
To prove it, we selected eight of the best, summery Gose-style beers we could find and ranked them for you. We were looking for complex, balanced flavors profile featuring nice levels of tartness, salinity, and overall thirst-quenching ability. Keep scrolling if you want to see where your favorite beer landed on this list (or if it didn’t make it at all).
8) Neshaminy Creek Summer Dollars
ABV: 4.9%
Average Price: $12 for a six-pack
The Beer:
If ever there was an official beer for summer, it would be Neshaminy Creek Summer Dollars. This homage to the first summer blockbuster ‘Jaws’, it’s a fruited Gose brewed with pilsner malts, white wheat that is conditioned on blood oranges. Sea salt adds a little bit of ocean brine to this brew.
Tasting Notes:
This gose is loaded with ripe orange aromas, funky acidity, wheat, and raspberry. The palate is slightly less exciting with juicy orange flavor as well as some pilsner malts, a tart acidity, and a gentle hint of sea salt throughout. Salt, citrus, and summer.
But… a bit of a one-trick pony.
Bottom Line:
This is a decent summer sipper. It’s just salt and orange and not much else though.
7) Cigar City Margarita Gose
ABV: 4.2%
Average Price: $12 for a six-pack
The Beer:
When you crack open a beer called a “Margarita Gose,” you should have a pretty good idea about what you’re in for. This 4.2% ABV summer sipper is a German-style Gose with orange peel, lime essence, and salt. It was crafted to taste like a tart, salty margarita.
Tasting Notes:
One sniff and you’d assume you were about to indulge in a margarita and that’s the point. There’s a ton of lime, orange peel, and salt. All it’s missing is the aroma of tequila. The palate continues this trend with more lime, orange, some cracker-like malts, and a ton of sea salt. It’s tart, refreshing, but feels like it’s missing something.
Bottom Line:
If you enjoy margaritas, you’ll really like this beer. But since it’s missing the tequila element, it might simply make you want to drink a real margarita instead.
6) Anderson Valley Briney Melon Gose
ABV: 4.2%
Average Price: $12 for a six-pack
The Beer:
If you only turned to one brewery for your Gose fix this summer, you can do much worse than Anderson Valley. One of our favorites from the Boonville, California-based brewery is its Briney Melon Gose. Brewed with Chinook, pale two-row malt, malted white wheat, rice hulls, and Chinook hops, it gets its summery elements from the use of watermelon and sea salt.
Tasting Notes:
Before your first sip, you’ll be treated to aromas of cereal grains, honey, ripe watermelon, salt, and gentle spices. Sipping it reveals more watermelon, freshly baked bread, citrus peels, slightly tart acidity, and a ton of salinity.
Bottom Line:
This beer is like biting into a ripe, juicy piece of watermelon with a dash of salt on it. It might seem strange at first, but it’s surprisingly refreshing.
5) Mikkeller Passion Pool
ABV: 4.5%
Average Price: $16 for a four-pack of 16-ounce cans
The Beer:
When it comes to envelope-pushing breweries, it’s difficult to beat Denmark’s Mikkeller. It’s a brewery unafraid of trying new things. A great example is Passion Pool. Instead of the usual citrus based Gose, Mikkeller made a banger of a sour ale with passionfruit and sea salt.
Tasting Notes:
The beer smells like a tropical paradise. Not surprisingly, the top aroma is that of passionfruit. Afterward, you’ll find mango, peach, orange peel, and ripe grapefruit. There’s also a faint aroma of sea salt. Sipping it only adds to the experience with more passionfruit mingling with ripe peach, pineapple, mango, floral hops, and more sea salt. It’s a very complex, flavorful summer beer.
Bottom Line:
If you’re the kind of person who makes a fruit salad and adds every single tropical fruit you can find at your local supermarket, this is your beer. Sea salt only adds to the experience.
4) Westbrook Key Lime Pie Gose
ABV: 4%
Average Price: $11 for a six-pack
The Beer:
When it comes to tart pie hierarchy, you’d have a hard time dethroning the iconic key lime pie. This complex beer version is brewed with CTZ hops, American ale yeast, acidulated pale malts, and wheat. It gets its key lime pie flavor from the addition of cinnamon, coriander, sea salt, vanilla, and key limes.
Tasting Notes:
You’d assume that a Gose that was supposed to smell and taste like pie wouldn’t really live up to the hype, but this one does. The nose is all graham crackers, key limes, and spices. The palate is more tart lime flavor that’s tempered by graham crackers, vanilla, coriander, and a nice kick of sea salt.
Bottom Line:
This Gose absolutely tastes like a key lime pie in beer form. Yet, it still manages to be light and crushable enough for the summer heat.
3) Grimm Super Spruce
ABV: 4.7%
Average Price: $19 for a four-pack of 16-ounce cans
The Beer:
To say this is a unique beer is a major understatement. Brewed with new-growth spruce tips, Chinook hops, white oak, and sea salt, this is the kind of beer that needs to be tasted to be believed. Pine, citrus, oak, salt. This is a different beer in the best way possible.
Tasting Notes:
Complex aromas of orchard fruits, citrus peels, dank pine, ripe grapefruit, and sea salt pave the way for the palate to follow. On the palate, you’ll find grapefruit, orange zest, lime, wine tannins, floral hops, and a ton of summery pine and salt. It’s a citrus, pine, and salt-forward beer you’ll come back to again and again.
Bottom Line:
This isn’t your usual Gose and that’s what makes it so exciting. The spruce flavor is so perfectly matched with the other flavors in this epic beer.
2) Creature Comforts Tritonia
ABV: 4.5%
Average Price: $13 for a six-pack
The Beer:
Creature Comforts Tritonia is a beer we look forward to drinking every summer. While it’s available year-round, we all know that summer is when this tart, salty Gose shines. Brewed with cucumber, lime, sea salt, coriander, and Creature Comforts’ proprietary blend of lactobacillus, it’s refreshing, tart, and memorable.
Tasting Notes:
Cucumber, lime, sweet wheat, floral hops, and sea salt are prevalent on the nose. Taking a drink, you’ll find flavors like ripe cucumber, coriander, wheat malt, and lime zest. The palate is tart and refreshing and there’s a background of sea salt throughout.
Bottom Line:
Crisp, tart, salty, what’s not to love? Creature Comforts Tritonia is an absolutely flavorful summer crusher if ever there was one.
1) The Veil Never Again
ABV: 4.9%
Average Price: $16 for a four-pack of 16-ounce cans
The Beer:
Another unique beer, The Veil’s Never Again is a fruited Gose you’ll want to keep in your fridge all summer long. Brewed with almost 100 gallons of raspberry puree and pine Himalayan Sea salt, this is a berry-filled, tart, salty flavor explosion of a beer.
Tasting Notes:
There’s no disputing that this is a raspberry-centered Gose. Ripe berries are big on the nose along with tart green apple, citrus peels, and a hint of salt. The palate is fruity, salty, and highly refreshing. Raspberries, blackberries, citrus zest, wheat malt, and a ton of sea salt make this a highly memorable beer.
Bottom Line:
While it might not seem overly complex, we assure you this raspberry Gose is something special. All of the flavors are tempered perfectly to make for an outstanding, crisp, tart, refreshing beer.