Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Oktoberfest is my season. Not just because the weather cools off and football is firmly upon us, but also because märzens flood the market with the most drinkable beer style in the universe. There’s nothing quite like a bready, malty Oktoberfest brew, a beer that’s as easy to drink as a light beer but loaded with enough flavor that you can drink them a liter at a time and not get sick of them.
Germany’s märzens are the standard bearer because their breweries have been making them for hundreds of years. That leaves America’s beermakers playing catchup. This doesn’t mean U.S. Oktoberfests are bad or inherently inferior — they’re usually great! It does mean brewmasters have a little room to experiment with a recipe that’s already pretty much perfect, but not infallible.
That means these beers vary a little more from coast to coast than their European counterpart. In a few places, that means a heavier hop load — the solution to lots of problems in American microbreweries and honestly not a terrible one. At California’s Firestone Walker, it means maturing the brew inside oak barrels to impart a smooth, slightly earthier beer that doesn’t throw away the hop profile, either.
Is it any good? Well, yeah. It might be the best beer I’ve had this year.
Firestone Walker Oaktoberfest: A
The first taste is, well, just about perfect by my estimation. The malt of the marzen is up front and lasts through the entire sip. The oak aging rolls in toward the end to lighten the load and finish things off with a dry, complex finish. It’s not especially sweet but not as hoppy as other American Oktoberfests either — drinking this after a Sam Adams Oktoberfest, for example, is a wild ride. This is bready and smooth and crisp and hot damn I want to go back in for more.
I’ve only had an oak-barreled Oktoberfest once before — Surly’s offering from Minneapolis. I liked it just fine, but it wasn’t enough to usurp any of the Munich tent staples in my September lineup. Maybe that set a low bar for this and I’m blown away by what’s just an above average beer. But man, I really, really like this beer.
Every sip is toasty caramel without feeling overly sweet or bitter. It’s perfectly drinkable, which is exactly what you want for a beer served in liters rather than pints. I could get through a proper German boot of this for an 11am Vanderbilt kickoff. Once I find this at Woodman’s, I just may.
Damn near perfect. Great beer.
