Oktoberfest & Other Assorted Beers for Tasting

By Greg B. Last week my labmates and I sat down for a little beer tasting of Oktoberfest styled beers. Since tasting some very good Dogfish head IPAs, notably the 60 minute, they have been very eager to try new beers and explore what this other side of the alcohol spectrum has to offer. After a few weeks of letting them sample various hoppy beers I decided that, being oktober, they should try some oktoberfest styled beers, which are very different in nature than the hoppy IPA styled ales. Essentially, both beers can start in similar styles, with pale and amber malts, but the oktoberfest style really emphasises the malt aspect and not the hoppy profiles.

Lined up for the night we had a mixture of US microbrews and traditional German beers for a side-by-side comparison. Ayinger’s Oktober fest-marzen, Flying Dog Dogtoberfest, Paulaner Oktoberfest Marzen, Saranac Octoberfest lager, Weihenstephaner Festbier, Weyerbacher autumn fest. We also had Flying fish brewery’s HopFish, Dogfish head’s 120 min IPA, and a little side taste of Ginga to balance out the night (a delicious, yet high alcohol beverage made from sour Portuguese cherries, sugar, and aguardente, or ‘burning water’ essentially made from the must of green grapes…. we’ll get into this later.

First, I have to mention this excellent cheeserie (fromagerie?) that Gabi had purchased this delicious Brie from. Fromager Des Clarines in, you guessed it, France. It was an excellent creaminess to the cheese and a little bit of tang in it, no doubt from the grass the cows in the fields get to chew on coming through in the cheese. An excellent cheese and I recommend this and potentially anything else they make to people who would like to check out some good cheese.

OK, having set the scene here are the tasting notes, in Rank order of best to worst for the night.

#1 The first beer of the night we drank also seemed to be the number one favorite beer! Ayinger’s Oktoberfest-Marzen. Gold amber color, nice foamy head with aromas of yeast and malts. Thick body, malty and sweet taste with low lacing around the glass. A classic German oktoberfest beer.

#2 (tie!) Flying Dog Dogtoberfest and Weyerbacher’s Autumnfest. Flying dog brewery is located in Frederick Maryland (they brew a lot of beer out there, apparently!) and had a really beautiful dark gold color to it. Low amount of head, gone really quick actually. Had a light sweet taste and malty aroma, with a medium body and more carbonation. While it was kind of malty it somehow lacked a real specific taste to it, though it did have a bit of a bitter aftertaste. Weyerbacher’s beer has a nice brown/gold color but the head was gone rather quickly here too. Very nice malt character (they know their malts up there!) and body with minimal aroma and minimal carbonation.

#4 Paulaner oktoberfest Marzen . Less red color than the flying dog, had a very light amber color, though the head retention was rather poor. Smelt of saaz hops on the nose with a bit of yeast aroma as well, had almost a pilsner styled aroma to it. Mild taste, but no special flavors hit me, or any of us tasting it, though the finish was rather bitter.. had a kind of ‘off’ flavor right at the end, almost like a beer burp, if that makes any sense? Also, to this the girls agreed as well, though they didn’t like the analogy, they thought it was spot on.

# 5 Saranac Oktoberfest lager. Big head on the pour, very lagery aroma with a yeast smell and almost a ’stale’ beer kind of aroma. The kind of smell you might get after a night of heavy partying and beer spilling on a floor of a kitchen or bar. Light malt flavor, pretty dry but a sweet aroma that hits you as you swallows the beer. Bitter at the back of the tongue at the finish. It actually tastes a lot like this Canadian beer I’ve had, Moosehead lager.

#6 Weihenstephaner Festbier. I had higher hopes for this beer, light pale color , foamy very white head which vanished rather quickly. Light yeasty aroma, also had a smell of sparkling cider or sweet medicine. Sweet, chemically flavor, but not very flavorful in general. The girls did NOT like this beer, and after some of the others, I have to agree.

And this concluded the oktoberfest tasting portion of the night. I think in general the beers I chose were a poor showing for German Oktoberfests and the girls definitely let me know that. Though I have to agree, some of these beers were notably poor in quality in a side-by-side comparison to other beers. But, being graduate students, we couldn’t let the night end here, we had to go back and try some hoppy beers to let the girls sleep well that night.

The Flying Fish brewery’s Hop Fish IPA was next for sampling. I had never heard of this brewery, but noticed a lot of trends for microbrews to include flying, fish, or dogs in their titles. This beer had a minimal hop aroma with a slight sweet, malty, boiled grains aroma. It was malty on the taste and sweet, with a slightly bitter finish.

Dogfish head 120 min IPA. This is the mother of all IPA beers (20% abv? sheesh!), at least in theory. 120 minutes of continually hopped boil, plus dry hopped for days and days after the boil? What could be better? It poured a thick, wheaty gold color with almost no head and no head retention to speak of. There was a nice piney aroma on the nose and smelled sweet and thick! The taste was sweet but not sickly sweet, it was a nice sweetness to work with the bitterness. Thick sweet alcohol on the flavor and mouthfeel, definitely a sipping beer. Alcohol on the finish but lacked bitter. It was slightly syrupy. However, interestingly if you eat the Brie mentioned above then take a sip, this fat in the cheese really accentuates the bitter flavors in the beer and brought them out of hiding. A very interesting combination, I recommend trying!

Beers (worst to best, left to right) and French Brie

As I mentioned above (way above), what night at a Portuguese person’s house would be complete without 30 year old Ginga? Just a small glass though, that is plenty. They use the ‘must’ of green grapes (green being young, in this case) to produce the aguardente, or ‘burning water’. Into this, you add sugar, cinnamon and sour cherries which grow in Portugal. Seal the jar up, and set it aside for decades. It really is incredible, definitely high in alcohol, drink. Has a nice spice to it to add a flavorful kick to the kick given by the alcohol in it.

And this wraps up the beer tasting for the night. Good friends and good beers and good food (Gabi served us manicotti for dinner with Delizioso’s sauce. It was great!) is an excellent way to spend a weekday night away from work, or putting work off for a few hours to enjoy some beer. Either way, I’m glad I got an opportunity to go through a bunch of beers with the girls and teach them something, even if they learned they don’t like German or German styled beers, they still were willing to try some new brews. Who knows what I’ll be able to convince them to try next?