Oktoberfest Style Beer
Last week I did a deep dive into the history of the German folk festival Oktoberfest and we learned that, while the modern festivities are mostly focused on beer and food, it didn’t start that way. So now that we know it’s not all about beer - let’s talk about beer.
Just like how Christmas decorations now appear on store shelves in September, Autumn- and Oktoberfest-style beers now show up on shelves in August. It’s insanity. The popularity of the styles has really exploded in the last few years.
But what constitutes an “Oktoberfest”-style beer? Is it a category or a specific style? And would I sound stupid if I just ordered “an Oktoberfest”?
Beer-volutionary
Well first, let’s make this confusing by saying “Oktoberfest” both is and isn’t a specific style of beer. And if that’s not confusing enough, this beer that both is and isn’t its own style will look and taste different in the U.S and Germany!
It might be easiest to look at the timeline of the festival’s beer through history, because it really evolved over time to be what we think of today.
For the first few decades of beer being served on the Theresienwiese grounds, which remember started in 1818 - about 8 years after the first party there, the beer served looked nothing like the modern-day German nor American version of an Oktoberfest beer. It would have much closer resembled a dunkel than anything else!
This is due to the technology at the time. Malting kilns could really only produce malts at one level, and that was: heavily roasted.
Dunkels are mild, dark lager beers that are gently hopped, malt forward, with low-ish ABV. Honestly, if you just removed the word “dark” from that sentence you could be describing a modern Oktoberfest style, so it makes sense these dunkel-like beer were the starting point.
But, luckily, technology got its act together and brewers were able to use malts in a range of colors and malted-ness, opening up the world of beer to new aromas and flavors.
Spaten brewery was the first to serve something different on the fair grounds, and in 1841 they poured what’s come to be known as the “modern märzen”, a more amber-colored lager brewed with a combination of malts.
And slowly, this more caramel, amber beer became the norm at Oktoberfest, for a long time too.
This is also where we get the difference I mention above between German and American Oktoberfest styles. These märzen beers are what most American breweries are making and selling as Oktoberfest beers.
They’re lagers with dark copper to reddish brown color, crisp and smooth mouthfeel, with sweet toasted bread aroma and faint hints of spice. It is sweetish but with noticeable hops and a dry finish.
And, as we see from our evolutionary timeline, American brewers are not wrong! The märzen is a type of Oktoberfest style beer - but we should be careful to stay Oktoberfest style beer, because this is where the important point is.
I think CraftBrewing.Com summed it up most succinctly:
While there are no rules set in stone, typically Oktoberfestbier (Oktoberfest beer) is used to reference only the beer served on the Wiesn, which style-wise happens to be festbier today.
This means only the following six Munich-based breweries are allowed to name their beers for the festival Oktoberfestbier: Spaten Brauerei, Hacker-Pschorr, Paulaner, Hofbräu, Augustiner, Löwenbräu.
Other brewers, from anywhere in the world, must call their seasonal lagers Oktoberfest style beer. Honestly, most brews I’ve seen this year have just decided to label them (correctly) as a märzen and then give them an Oktoberfest-y type name.
Reexamining that CraftBeer.Com quote though, we have one more beer-volutionary hop to make. While mäzens have taken over the U.S. seasonal landscape, the Bavarian breweries continued to change it up a bit.
Today, an Oktoberfest style beer in Münich is much lighter, both is color and taste, than the old-school märzens or dunkels. This beer has been come to be know as the Festbier. It’s golden in color and very easy to drink; it was developed Paulaner and introduced in the early 1970s. It became so popular over the next few decades that by the 1990s the märzen had officially been replaced on the festival grounds.
Festbier is now it’s own official style of beer, and while other breweries can make their own version of it (and they have been! I’ve seen a few sprinkled around the U.S. market), remember that only those 6 sanctioned breweries can call it an official Oktoberfestbier.
The Time-lapse Summary
So we see that “Oktoberfestbier” is a specific category of beer, as its formally defined as any of the fest beers produced by the six major German breweries located on the festival grounds. But it’s also easy to say, no, it’s not a specific style because what we so flippantly call Oktoberfest here in the States is actually its own type of beer, the märzen.
What most people seem to agree upon, is that we can use the term “Oktoberfest style beer” as a catch all for the seasonal releases right now (minus the pumpkin beers - they’re definitely not part of this discussion); some are more malty, some are more pale, but they’re all delicious. So let’s just cheers our glasses and sing “Ein Prosit!”
Weekly Adventure
There are so many märzens and festbiers out there on shelves right now. I suggest you go to a store where you can make your own 4-pack or 6-pack and create your own little tasting session. It’ll be fun to experience the diverse range of what an Oktoberfest style beer can be!
Cheers,
Molly
References
https://www.craftbeering.com/oktoberfest-vs-marzen-oktoberfest-style-beer/