What is an Oktoberfest Beer?
Munich’s Oktoberfest has been going on in one form or another for over 200 years. Until fairly recently, the beer served at Oktoberfest in Munich and the beers made by most breweries in the southern half of Bavaria for Autumn celebrations was a Märzenbier. This is the vinyl LP version of an Oktoberfest beer – in other words the REAL version, with replacement editions a poor substitute for the real thing. Full-flavored, deeply malty and well balanced, it’s the perfect beer for the cooler evenings that Autumn brings.
At some point in the 1990s, as Munich’s Oktoberfest grew from a German regional celebration to an international destination party, Munich breweries began making what’s now known as Festbier. This is a wholly different style of beer than Märzenbier, lighter in both color and flavor and made for mass consumption in large quantities; it’s literally a pale shadow of the original classic beer.
At Gotahold, we brew a traditional, old-school, Märzen beer for our Oktoberfest.
What’s a Märzen?
The beer’s name derives from the German word for the month of March: März. Why, you might wonder, would a beer served in Autumn be named for a month in Spring? The answer lies in the pre-refrigeration world this beer evolved in. Before the advent of machines that could keep things cold, breweries in Germany would pause production in spring and resume in the fall, as fermenting lager beer in the warmer weather months would produce bad outcomes. Thus, beers for early fall celebrations like Oktoberfest were made in March and stored in cellars over the summer. Germans, literalists that they are, call them “March Beers” because they were typically made in March.
What makes them Great?
Oktoberfest Beers – and by this I mean Märzen beers – are Amber beers that are deeply imbued with the toasty, grainy flavors we most associate with the descriptive word, “malty.” They’re well balanced, with enough bitterness to keep the sweeter malty notes in harmony, but are generally on the sweet side and medium to full-bodied.
What makes true Märzenbiers paragons of malty goodness is a recipe that includes mostly Munich Malt, a type of malt that is made with a low temperature roasting process.
A little digression on Beer Color
It’s entirely possible to make different beers that have a similar appearance in terms of the beer’s color, and yet taste vastly distinct from each other. There’s a fairly popular American lager beer, for example, that is Amber in color but has a very mild flavor, not far off from typical American light lagers. This type of beer is made by adding a small amount of a very dark brown or black grain to an otherwise light colored grist, yielding an Amber colored beer with little of the toasty, malty flavors typically associated with Amber beers.
A brewer can also make an amber colored beer by using a lot of malt that has a light amber hue to it. These lightly toasted grains, when used in force, will yield a richer, toasty-malty beer that will have a similar color to the one made with a small amount of very dark beer.
Gotahold’s Interpretation
As usual, we’re shooting not for best-seller status, but for best flavor. Starting with primarily Munich Malt from a famous Bavarian Maltings, we brew our Oktoberfest to be a true fall classic. The beer is Amber and bright, and should carry a thick, tannish-amber foam. The taste of the beer starts with a malty sweetness, with lovely toasted grain notes and is balanced with a subdued hop bitterness. A well-aged lager, the yeast character is clean and crisp.