FALSETOBERFESTS ABOUND IN EUROPE: SOME AMERICANS DO BETTER

There are exactly six Oktoberfest beers.   There might be a couple more if you can find an authentic dark version at one or two of the tents, but we don’t think the darks are even offered any more.   The “Big Six” of Munich have arranged (conspired?) to ban any beer that is not brewed in Munich from the fest.   When smaller brewers built Munich breweries to try to get a piece of the lucrative sales, the law changed to “grandfather out” any new brewery.

In fact you have the choice of only four breweries now that Spaten and Lowenbrau have merged (and sold out to AB InBev).  Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr are owned by the same holding company – one that’s 49% owned by Heineken.   The two remaining truly Munich breweries are Hofbrau, which is owned by the State of Bavaria and Augustiner, which is owned by a private foundation—and almost operates as a charity.

Any brewer can use the term “Oktoberfest” to sell beer outside Germany.   We’ve tasted over 200 beers that call themselves Oktoberfest (or some other form of “oberfest”).   WE sometimes snottily refer to them as “falstoberfests”.  We object more to non-Munich breweries who misappropriate the term (Becks, for example) that Americans who clearly are not trying to make you think their beer is served at Munich’s Oktoberfest

Here are a half dozen American Oktoberfest-style beers that that are reasonably easy to get.  Beyond that this list includes a range of sweetness, authenticity (“Echt”), and complexity  You can use these to celebrate all the “Octoberfest” celebrations that in America occur in October instead of the true fest’s September timing.

Yuengling’s Octoberfest is very sweet, but it’s clean.   It tastes to us like a stepped up version of their lager.  We think if you like the lager, you’ll be fine with this, and the price is an incentive.

D.C Brau is one of our favorite breweries and one of only a handful for which we’ll buy a full six pack to be able to try a new offering.  But their Oktoberfest this year seems unusually sweet with caramel almost to the point of sugar.

 

Straub Oktoberfest – You’ll probably have to go to Pennsylvania to find this one, but if you’re in Pennsylvania, Straub beers can be found in supermarkets and the like in many parts of the states.   Straub is one of the last independent 19^th century regional/local brewers started by immigrants in the backwaters of Pennsylvania to slake the thirst of other immigrants.   We love the old brewery, and we used to love the flagship lager when we were young and sweet-happy.   In recent years, the brewery has added a range of specialty products.  This Oktoberfest is sweet – the upstate Pennsylvania demands that—but soft herbal hops and even a hint of fruit give it a pretty nice breadth.

Sierra Nevada collaborates with a different German brewer each year to produce it’s Oktoberfest.   This year the brewer is Miltenberger, a decent German brewer, but located a long 350 kilometers from Munich.  The color is an authentic rich gold, it has chewy rich malt and slightly more bitter at the end than the real deal.   It’s not the smoothest beer they’ve ever brewed, but it’s not bad.

Last year’s version, brewed with Bamberg’s Mahrs Brau, was much more complex and interesting, though.

Heavy Seas brews an Oktoberfest that Ellie calls “echtly risky” – 6% abv and very easy to drink.  The sweetness is almost balanced by herbal and slightly fruity hops.

Peak Organic from Portland Maine, is usually available in the same distribution markets as Shipyard beers.  Their Hop Harvest Oktoberfest is decidedly hoppy for the style, though there’s some chewy malt underneath.  It’s unusual to find a hoppy fest beer anywhere in Germany, but this very American entry accompanies a range of foods well.

We’ll have more to say about the following two beers in a subsequent post.  Neither is widely available away from the brewery.

Mad Fox ‘s Hitzig Frau Festbier is another winner this year.   It leans towards the modern style and has better balance than most.   At a recent Oktoberfest beer tasting, it was more popular than Spaten’s version.

Black Hoof is a new brewery in Leesburg, one of Virginia’s premier beer destinations.   He brews Briish styles well, but the German beers are sensational.  The slightly dark Opa’s Festbier is one of the best we’ve tasted this year   [Beer Review # 0128    20171008]

NEXT WE’LL FEATURE BEERS OF LEESBURG VIRGINIA

 

 

 

 

GORDON BIERSCH ROCKVILLE’S FESTBIER: SULTAN SWATS THE MODERN OKTOBERFEST STYLE OUT OF THE PARK!

5.7% Abv    25 IBUs

A disadvantage of teaching is that we’ve been to the actual Oktoberfest only once.   On the other hand we’ve had lots of summer days to explore local fests all over Germany.  I wish we had counted the Volk and Schutzen fests we’ve been to – it’s many dozens– and each one featured a local brewery’s fest bier.   Thirty years ago we encountered a good many fest biers that mimicked the dark Oktoberfest style, but many were lighter in color and less cloyingly sweet in a night of overindulgence.   We think some of those local gems might have influenced the “big six” of Munich to a more balanced approach to the beers served in their massive tents.

The beers of Munich’s Oktoberfest have shifted dramatically in the “light” direction – color and balance, though no lighter in body.  These lighter cleaner fest beers are sometimes hard to find in America.   We know of one major festival that sent back an entire shipment of genuine Oktoberfest bier because the organizers “knew” it was supposed to be darker.   The brewery resolved to never let the real stuff cross the Atlantic again, and we think, 25 years later, they haven’t.

 

But you can get a remarkably authentic Oktoberfest beer that didn’t have to cross the pond.  Over a thousand American craft breweries (OK we really haven’t counted, but we’d bet money it’s over 2,000) brew a fest beer, and while some of them are under-aged attempts at the old style dark Märzen, others match the real deal better than many German-brewed  non-Munich copy cats.  We’ll feature Mad Fox’s Hitzig Frau before we leave this theme; tonight we’ll look at another Mid Atlantic marvel.

We’re writing this post at the Gordon Biersch in Rockville, Maryland.  Head Brewer Nassim Sultan had some big shoes to fill when he replaced Christian Layke who was moving on to start up his own brewery, and he’s filled them very well indeed.   We’ve featured some of his other winners in the past in this blog, but his Festbier this year is one of the best beers he’s done.

It’s a rich gold, like the beers you’d have gotten in the big tents if you had been there last week.  The 25 IBUs clean the sweetness beautifully and make it achingly moreish.   At 5.7%, it can get you in trouble over the course of an evening, but even there he’s got an edge – the beer in the tent in Munich is likely to be a deceptively dangerous 5.9.

Tasting notes:  Full body with enough sweetness to be authentic, but with a crisp Hersbrucker hop finish that suggested wild flowers when it was just out of the tank, but has settled into a soft floral beautiful balancing not-so-bitter that doesn’t just balance the malt, but embraces it.   Starts clean and stays clean with fresh malt and near-perfect hop balance even into subsequent half liters.  (The brewery is happy to serve you a full liter if you’d like.   The only thing that’s not authentic is that here they actually fill to the line; in Germany you’re lucky if you get two-thirds.)

Food Pairings:  Not a lot of variation here as we drink through the fest beers.   GB has a Jägerschnitzel that’s not nearly as authentic as Nassim’s beer, but the chicken schnitzel is quite well done.  The spätzle is authentically yummy, and you’d be lucky to get the mushrooms with it they serve here.   You can’t find a chicken schnitzel in Germany (they’re spit roasting all the birds), but turkey schnitzels are common – and just a notch below veal as a premium dish (pork schnitzels are for the workers—and schoolteachers).   [Beer Review # 0127    20171006]

NEXT (OKTOBER 8) WE’LL FEATURE MORE FESTBIER!

 

 

 

SPATEN OKTOBERFEST – IN THE US, IT’S STILL THE “ORIGINAL”

Abv  5.9%   

Many American visitors to Oktoberfest are shocked to find the beers a pale gold color – about that of a deep Helles and not that much darker than most pilsners.   In the US, Spaten, at least, avoids the culture shock and sends over a version of their original dark version of the style, sometimes labeled Ur- Märzen, “Ur” meaning original and “Märzen” referring to the original March fest beer.   The Märzen style originated because beer could not be successfully brewed in the warmer months, though ice caves allowed for it to be stored quite successfully.

The dark Märzen would have been expected in the 19^th century when it became the dominant beer in Oktoberfest.   Spaten claims to have originated the style and the evidence seems to support the claim.   Spaten was one of the breweries that pioneered lager beers, and it had close connections to Vienna, where amber beers were emerging at the time.

Tastes change, though, and when we visited Oktoberfest in 1989 the dark version of the style was already on its last legs.   None of the tents featured it as the default festbier.  You could get it on request at only a couple of tents and from the wood—if you knew to beg—at Augustiner.   The modern Oktoberfest beer is still stronger than average – approaching 6.0, not far off from the low range of IPAs== and is matured for longer than the average beers, although that lagering period seems to be shrinking for some of them.

We don’t believe you can find the American import Spaten Oktoberfest, or anything like it, at any of the tents in today’s Oktoberfest.  Rather than authenticity, it’s best to focus on the fact that it’s a living historical relic, preserved by American demand for a beer that’s no longer served at the fair.

Tasting notes:  It’s a dark caramel amber, neither as dark not as sweet as most Munich dunkels, but not that far off either.   It starts with roast caramel, but a brace of noble hops almost creates a balance in the finish before the caramel takes back over into the aftertaste.   That kiss of hops, though, makes it just moreish enough to get through the first liter.   After that, at 5.9%, your judgment begins to cloud and your enthusiasm for your surroundings carries you through as many more liters as you….want.

Food Pairings:  Traditional Oktoberfest beer paired with Oktoberfest food for decades: spit roasted chicken dripping with the juices from the birds on the upper racks, Oxen rotating for hours on a huge spit—often just outside the tent for show, pretzels the size of a tricycle tire (the big one), and roasted mandeln (almonds) tossed in caramelized sugar and salt.  [Beer Review # 0126    20171002]

NEXT WE’LL CONTINUE OUR TASTES OF OKTOBERFEST