From September to November, a sure beer model begins to fill cabinets, faucet menus and Instagram feeds throughout the nation—and I’m not speaking about pumpkin beer. Oktoberfest is in every single place. However for a beer with such ubiquity, few can agree on what it even is.
Barring its more moderen postmodern period, beer has lengthy been ruled by kinds. Phrases like pale ale, porter or doppelbock are shorthand for understanding the profile and course of behind any given beer. However relating to Oktoberfest, there’s an unlimited taste spectrum that the moniker might entail.
“There are a selection of favor interpretations you may discover beneath an ‘Oktoberfest’ label, significantly in the US,” says Brian Grossman, head brewer at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Ashleigh Carter, head brewer and co-owner at Denver’s Bierstadt Lagerhaus, agrees. “I don’t assume the phrase ‘Oktoberfest’ can inform you precisely what it’s. It’s divided into camps: festbier and märzen.”
Märzen has loved the Oktoberfest affiliation for longer. It’s a centuries-old German model historically made in spring, cellared and consumed via hotter months, and completed within the fall. That timeline made it a go-to for the primary Oktoberfest celebration in 1810. It remained the Oktoberfest staple till 1990, when many German breweries switched to lighter festbiers.
“They started experimenting with lighter lagers as a response to shifting traits in beer and to align with the modern brewing practices and shopper preferences of the time,” says Katherine Benecke, licensed Cicerone and normal supervisor at New York’s Treadwell Park. “They have been additionally cheaper to supply and faster to brew.”
Plus, as a lighter model, festbiers go down so much simpler at an occasion centered round guzzling as a lot beer as attainable. Orangey-amber märzens are heavier and richer, typically brewed with malts like Vienna and Munich, imparting graham cracker, caramel, toffee and biscuit notes. They’re additionally barely stronger, ABV-wise. Festbiers, in the meantime, are golden-straw, grainy-sweet and easy-drinking.
Order an Oktoberfest on the official competition in Munich, and also you’ll be met with that gentle festbier. However within the States, Oktoberfests are nonetheless extra generally märzens.
Living proof: Brooklyn’s KCBC’s annual Zøktoberfest launch is a märzen. Co-founder Zack Kinney says the beer, which he was homebrewing earlier than the brewery opened in 2016, was born by “following within the footsteps of what I noticed American craft brewers doing on the time.” Certainly, older craft breweries like Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada have lengthy made märzens as their Oktoberfests, solidifying the hyperlink between the biscuity beer and the autumn season. Bierstadt and Cleveland’s Nice Lakes Brewing Co. additionally nonetheless honor the märzen path.
“We do what I might contemplate the extra conventional Oktoberfest,” says Nice Lakes model coordinator and authorized superior Cicerone Michael Williams. “We’ve been round since 1988, and that’s the way in which most American craft breweries [have] rolled with it.”
However the various kinds don’t neatly adhere to an American-European divide. Festbiers are more and more cropping up beneath the Oktoberfest moniker at American breweries, too, which Carter attributes to extra folks experiencing Oktoberfest firsthand, higher beer schooling and a rising, diversifying curiosity in lagers—why keep on with märzen when you possibly can add festbier to your lineup and exhibit the nuances of lagers?
Actually, KCBC not too long ago added a festbier to its Oktoberfest-timed choices; in New Orleans, Brieux Carré likewise makes each a standard märzen and a festbier. Head brewer Charles Corridor says they profit from being a taproom-focused brewery, the place employees can clarify variations to visitors as they struggle each kinds. And whereas he stands behind each, he does have an opinion on what must be thought of the Oktoberfest. “I believe the trendy festbier needs to be the default for ‘Oktoberfest’ beer, since that’s usually what’s served in Germany.”
Head brewer at Pittsburgh’s Hop Farm Brewing Co. Matthew Gouwens agrees. “Festbier is an Oktoberfest model,” he says. To him, märzen really makes extra sense as a spring beer due to its brewing historical past.
In maybe the strongest exhibiting of the American Oktoberfest evolution, Sierra Nevada, a reputation youthful breweries reference when explaining their choice to brew märzen, has taken to vacillating its annual brew between märzens and festbiers. “The beer beneath our ‘Oktoberfest’ label is completely different every year as a result of we work with a unique German collaborator every year,” says Grossman. This 12 months, they’ve made a festbier with Brauerei Gutmann.
If the model that’s partly liable for establishing the American craft blueprint for Oktoberfest beers now brews each kinds beneath the Oktoberfest title, it could be time to just accept a less-tidy definition of the model.
“I believe we will paint a broad-stroke definition [for] beer drinkers,” says beer choose and author Joshua Weikert. “If it’s a pale to amber lager with a bready-toasty profile and a bit of European hops character, it may plausibly be referred to as ‘Oktoberfest.’”
