The Asia Beer Championship is an annual awards programme dedicated to the enhancement of premium craft beverage culture across the continent. From Japan to Jordan, the competition is open to any beer brewed commercially within the vast and diverse expanse that is Asia. First organised in Singapore in 2022, the championship delegation has returned to the city state every year since.

An international panel of professionally trained brewers and qualified beer judges select the top three brews in no less than 32 different style categories. These categories have been chosen to reflect styles commonly found in the Asian marketplace. Furthermore, champion trophies are awarded in a total of five general categories. Such categories include the likes of ‘Country Champion Brewpub’ and ‘Champion Brewpub of Asia’, awarded to the brewpub with the four highest placing beers. All brews that reach a pre-determined, points-based quality level receive a ‘Chairman’s Selection’ accolade.

Participant brewers are provided expert feedback on their respective entries in the form of tasting notes. Not only does this aid the development of existing processes and future recipes, it also helps establish a quality benchmark for the benefit of consumers.

The 2025 edition of the championship took place on September 24^th and 25^th. Once the final results had been tallied, the winners and medallists were announced during a live awards ceremony at Brew Asia 2025 in Bangkok on October 17. As in previous years, numerous brewers succeeded in captivating the judges with exotic interpretations of traditional styles. The winner of category number 10 – Gose – is a fine example of one of these transcendent achievements.

Straight Outta Goslar

Gose is a unique style of beer that is characterised by its sour, tart, and slightly salty flavour. It is typically brewed with a minimum of 50% malted wheat and supplemented with malted barley, like pilsner malt. This constitution contributes to its light and refreshing body. A propensity towards high carbonation, as well as low alcohol content, render the style even more suitable for warm weather.

Traditionally speaking, gose beers often contain ingredients such as lemon, coriander, and salt. Their characteristic sourness is acquired through inoculation with Lactobacillus, a hop intolerant bacteria that provides a light acidity. Nowadays hops are added for flavouring but the effect it has on the taste of a gose is minimal.

The style was first brewed somewhere between the 12^th and 15^th century in the town of Goslar, Germany, through which the river Gose runs. The beer’s distinct salty character originally stems from the natural salinity of the area’s mineral-rich aquifers.  

By the mid-18^th century, the style’s popularity had spread to the city of Leipzig, where local breweries quickly started producing gose on a previously unmatched scale. In those days, gose beers were fermented spontaneously – that is to say, without the addition of yeast. The brews were still actively fermenting when delivered to taverns in casks. These casks were then stored in cellars with the tap bung closed but the shive hole left open, allowing carbon dioxide to escape. When fermentation had slowed to a point where no gas emerged, the gose was ready to bottle.

The casks were subsequently emptied into a tank, from whence the beer was transferred to traditional long-necked bottles. These bottles were not closed with a cap or cork, but with a plug of yeast that naturally rose up the neck as secondary fermentation continued.

A Style Worth Saving

By 1900 there were over eighty gose taverns in Leipzig and the style had become synonymous with its adopted home. In a cruel twist of fate, however, two world wars and the division of Germany almost wiped the style from the face of the earth until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

At the start of World War II, food shortages in Germany incited the allocation of grain to bread making. Only one brewery – the Rittergutsbrauerei Döllnitz – continued to produce gose. When the brewery was nationalised and shut down in 1945, gose temporarily disappeared altogether.

A gentleman called Friedrich Wurzler, who had worked at the Döllnitz brewery and knew how to prepare gose, opened a small brewery in Leipzig in 1949. Before his death in the late 1950s, Wurzler passed the recipe to his stepson. When the latter passed away in 1966, the brewery was disbanded and the production of gose ceased once more.

Until the 1980s, that is, when an entrepreneur from Leipzig named Lothar Goldhahn restored an old gose tavern. After convincing a brewery in East Berlin to start producing gose for him, the style was resurrected yet again. Following the tavern’s closure in 1995 there was another phase of stagnancy in terms of gose production that lasted until 1999, when the original recipe was modified to enable larger output. Since then, gose beer has become increasingly accessible and desirable.

There are currently more than 400 producers of gose beer worldwide. From Germany to the UK, on to the USA, and as far as New Zealand, the sour, fruity style from Goslar continues to enthral beer aficionados of all colours and creeds. One country where its popularity has particularly soared is India, inspiring award-winning interpretations in the process.

Great State Aleworks

The judges at the Asia Beer Championship 2025 awarded the title of best gose to Great State Aleworks’ Streetside Guava Gose. Established in Pune in 2017, Great State is a craft brewery with a penchant for incorporating local ingredients into modern, experimental ales. Its core range encompasses juicy IPAs, tangy sours, and millet ales, complemented by around thirty small batch series. These delicious brews are supplied to approximately 70 bars and restaurants in Pune, Mumbai, and Goa.

Streetside is a refreshingly tart beer with the distinguishing sour and salty qualities of Goslar’s finest, infused with a ton of guava. Inspired by a ubiquitous South (East) Asian streetside snack, the brew evokes the delights of sliced guava dusted with salt and chilli. Apart from securing Great State’s first ever gold medal in an international competition, Streetside is also the brewery’s first beer to be launched in a bottle.

In addition to concocting riveting beers, Great State Aleworks is an active advocate for craft beer culture in India. Supplementary endeavours include ‘Great State of Mind’, initially a series of playlists on Spotify that has evolved into the curation, production, and pressing of vinyl. Volume 1 was released in June 2025, with a sequel is currently in the works. Frequent food collaborations involving local chefs are also organised. Moreover, the brewery launched the Deep Dive Beer Fest in March 2025. The first edition of this festival was held across the span of three days in Pune and showcased over 45 beers by 18 Indian breweries.

Having established itself as one of the subcontinent’s most experimental, collaborative, and community-forward breweries, Great State is also on course to becoming the first Indian microbrewery to export abroad. With any luck, the Streetside Guava Gose will be readily available at an outlet near you before long.

Of Things to Come

The ultimate salute given to the Streetside Guava Gose at the Asia Beer Championship 2025 exemplifies the innovative and versatile nature of craft beer today. The fact that a brewery from Pune, India can receive international acclaim for its representation of a German beer style that has existed for centuries goes to show how exciting these times are for the industry as a whole. Breweries like Great State Aleworks and many others in Asia are pushing the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable. So-called purists may feel aggrieved by these developments but there is no turning back now – the future is already here.

At Beer Asia, we would like to take it one step further and suggest that it was always meant to be this way. For hundreds of years, gose has been brewed with coriander and salt. The use of these ingredients means that the style has never been in compliance with the strict German purity laws. Nevertheless, gose beer was granted an exemption on the grounds of being a regional specialty. In other words, there has always been room for experimentation. Now that such endeavours are being celebrated, the style is steadily becoming a global delicacy. And this, dear reader, is something that should be applauded.