Of Minnesota Oktoberfests

 At the beginning of this month, Minneapolis based writer Jerard Fagerberg started work at the same organisation as myself. The subject of beer pretty quickly came up and lo and behold we have another person on the team that writes about the world's favourite barley based beverage. Having suitably followed each other on Twitter, I got a message from Jerry offering to send some Minnesota festbiers and märzens to add to my ongoing mass Oktoberfest tasting. A few days later and my fridge had 7 beers from the far north chilling down. Come Sunday they were ready to drink...and so I did.

The beers were, as you can see in the picture:

• Summit Oktoberfest
• Schell's Oktoberfest
• Bauhaus Schwandtoberfest
• Beaver Island Oktoberfest
• Indeed Oktoberfest
• Fair State Cooperative Festbier
• Utepils Receptional Festbier

I decided to subject them to the same approach as I have been doing with all the beers in this year's tasting, which is exactly the same as last year:

• Sight - 3 points
• Smell - 10 points
• Taste - 15 points
• Balance of sweet to bitter - 2 points
• Personal opinion - 10 points

So without further ado, let's jump into my Cyclopsesque tasting notes, I didn't take pictures for each beer as I was too busy drinking the beer, you understand that right?

Summit Oktoberfest - 6.5%

• Sight - recently polished copper, inch of ivory head, excellent clarity
• Smell - fresh crusty bread, rich malt complexity, no hops
• Taste - beautiful Munich malt sweetness, rich bready notes, herbal hop bite in the finish
• Sweet - 2.5/5
• Bitter - 2/5

What a lovely start to the tasting, a beautifully complex lager that has everything you need to make it dangerously drinkable. The hops were evident without intruding, and the clean lager fermentation gave it the right amount of snap to keep me coming back for more. There was also an intriguing slight coconut note in the mix.

Schell's Oktoberfest - 5.8%

• Sight - orange, almost Irn-Bru orange in the light, persistent off white head, beautiful clarity
• Smell - toasted crusty bread, a touch of toffee, no hops
• Taste - toasted bread, and also classic pilsner malt cereal character noticeable, clean herbal hops
• Sweet - 2.5/5
• Bitter - 2/5

I have to admit that I was really please to see this one on the box. My last beer from Schell's was a decade ago when they brewed a tmavé that I very much enjoyed, and here was another that, were Schell's available in Virginia, I would be buying regularly. Medium bodied, with a fantastic balance, and eminently drinkable.

Bauhaus Schwandtoberfest - 5.7%

• Sight - deep amber, quarter inch white foam, good clarity
• Smell - fresh bread from the oven, little if any hop aroma, clean
• Taste - bready malts again, toasty with a slight caramel note, clean hop bitterness
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 2/5

The head sank into a schmeer of bubbles pretty quickly. This was a decent, malt forward, clean lager, with just enough hop bite to stop that hefty body from being cloying.

Beaver Island Oktoberfest - 6%

• Sight - deep copper, red highlights, thin white head, excellent clarity
• Smell - Honey on toast, no hops
• Taste - slightly doughy, underbaked bread, maybe a touch of burnt sugar
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2/5

In lots of ways this had things right. It was medium bodied, quite complex, and the bitterness from the hops was enough to just stop it being too sickly, but there was something of an odd after taste which was a distraction trying to nail down.

Indeed Oktoberfest - 5.8%

• Sight - amber, quarter inch of white head, good clarity
• Smell - pilsner malt cereal, sweetness of Maillard reactions
• Taste - toasted malt, rich malt sweetness, floral hops
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2/5

Oh I liked this one. Lots of malt complexity, toasted Vienna, toffee like Munich, yum, yum, yum, to top it all there was the crisp (still fuck off with your crispy shite people) lager characteristic that brings everything in to sharp relief for another mouthful.

Fair State Cooperative Festbier - 5.7%

• Sight - golden, half inch of persistent white foam, good clarity
• Smell - rich pilsner malt grain character (decoction mash?), nice bready character, subtle herbal hop note
• Taste - solid cereal grain character, lots of Pilsner malt, traces of honey, spicy hops
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2/5

This was bloody marvellous, absolutely bloody marvellous. Like a stronger Czech style lager, packing a wallop bit still with a firm bitterness and clean finish. Could happily drink this all day long.

Utepils Receptional Festbier - 5.9%

• Sight - deep gold, quarter inch white head, superb clarity
• Smell - dollops of lightly honeyed pilsner malt, light bready note, some subtle lemongrass
• Taste - more honeyed pilsner malt, floral hops with a slight spicy edge
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2/5

Another lovely festbier, perfectly balanced, refreshingly clean in the finish. Reminded me of the Primátor Exklusiv 16° strong pale lager from Czechia which was once declared the world's best lager. Again a beer I could imagine drinking maß after maß of in an autumnal biergarten.

So there we have it, 5 märzens and 2 festbiers that do Minnesota proud. In terms of a mini-league on my point system they ended up as:

1. Utepils Receptional (32/40, wins on personal preference)
2. Summit Oktoberfest (32/40)
3. Fair State Festbier (31/40, third on personal preference)
4. Indeed Oktoberfest (31/40)
5. Schell's Oktoberfest (30/40)
6. Beaver Island Oktoberfest (28/40)
7. Bauhaus Schwandtoberfest (26/40)

Utepils for the win it is then, and clear evidence based on these numbers that the pale festbier style is still my preferred version of the annual autumnal lagerfest...

Thanks again to Jerry for sending the beers down, and I am in the process of curating a selection of fine Virginia beers to send back north for his drinking pleasure.

Double the Darkness

It was only after I discovered the delights of beer from small breweries in the Czech Republic that I started to develop a taste for dark lager, called either Tmavé or Černé depending on the whim of the brewery. Kozel's Černé is more of a dark amber while Kout na Šumavě's Tmavé absorbs light like a black hole, yet one is "black" and the other "dark respectively.

When I finally decided to make my own lagers, during a particularly cold snap in January, the style I chose first was tmavé, simply because I knew it would be more forgiving of any mess ups along the way than would be a pilsner. I wrote about the recipe and inspiration for the beer back at the beginning of the year. Having enjoyed most of my stash of Černý Lev, I learnt that Schell's Brewing Company up in Minnesota had done a limited batch of tmavé, calling it Stag 5 and so I wanted to do a side by side tasting of the two beers.

First up was Schell's, which is 5.7% and has 30 IBU of Saaz, if the info on Ratebeer is to be believed. Although this picture makes the beer look almost pitch black, it is in fact a dark brown which becomes a rich crimson when held up to the light. The head is light tan and lingers for the duration. It most certainly looked the part.

In terms of aroma there was caramel, like toffee really, a hint of roasted coffee, though it wasn't harsh and in your face about it, and the gentle, soothing spiciness of Saaz hops in the background. I wasn't expecting the smooth flavours of bitter sweet chocolate to be at the fore in the taste department, but it was and it worked well, that roasty edge was there, like toast that is between done and burnt, and the bitterness of the hops kicks in at the end. I found myself sucking this beer down, well assembled, easy to drink and medium bodied, yes I liked it. Where I would put it in the spectrum of tmavé that I have drunk in the Czech Republic? Well ahead of the likes of Kozel and Staropramen, that's for sure, so on a par with Bernard I would say (for the unitiated, that means pretty damned good).

Now for my Černý Lev, which is "Black Lion" in English, which ended up with 5.6% abv and 24 IBU, so in a similar ballpark to the Schell's. This time the picture doesn't hide anything, the beer is a very dark brown, bordering on black and edged with crimson in the light. The head is light tan and voluminous, when eventually it died down a bit, it stuck at about a centimetre for the time it took me to drink the beer. With the head duly receded, it again looked the part.

The aromas bouncing around in the glass for this were treacle, roasted coffee, with hints of spice and I thought a trace of lemony hay. In the taste department the coffee really came to the fore, coupled with sweet malty juiciness and a firm bitter bite which may have slightly unbalanced the beer. The body on my beer was fuller than the Schell's and there was a trace of something solventy about the beer, which I think may have come from underpitching the yeast and having it at slightly higher temperatures than recommended. I like my beer, always a good thing, but it isn't as well integrated and put together as Schell's. Mrs V expressed a clear preference for the Schell's, saying that my beer had too much roastiness in it for her tastes.

I think I might do this kind of comparative tasting a bit more often, as a way to gauge where my homebrew is going right and going wrong. Certainly a worthwhile experiment, I think the next one will be my German Pilsner next to Scrimshaw.

I just wanted to quickly thank Josh up in Minnesota for procuring and sending the beer down to fellow CAMRA homebrewer and occasional blogger, Jamey - have a read of his blog, Barlow Brewing.

Brewer of the Week

The year is 1860, and immigrants are flooding into the US. The Civil War is still a year away. Germany won't exist as a nation state for another 11 years, and only then after giving the French a bit of a spanking. The British Open is played for the first time, near Ayr in Scotland, and in New Ulm, Minnesota there is a new brewery.

Having been born in the Schwarzwald area of Baden-Württemberg, August Schell was one of those immigrants and on realising that good German style beer was difficult to find in the New World he set about making it himself. Much like the pioneers of today's craft beer movement. 151 years later, the August Schell Brewing Company is the second oldest brewery in America.

Name: David Berg
Brewery: August Schell Brewing Company

How did you get into brewing as a career?

After working in the avionics industry as an engineer for 8 years, I decided it was time for a change in my life. I had been homebrewing for a number of years and I really enjoyed it. So, I decided to go to brewing school.

When I graduated from the American Brewer’s Guild in 1996, I accepted the head brewing job at Water Tower Brewing in Eden Prairie, MN. I brewed there until 2002, and then I took a job as head brewer at Bandana Brewing in Mankato, MN. When I was laid off in 2006, I accepted the job as Assistant Brewmaster at August Schell Brewing.

What is the most important characteristic of a brewer?

Attention to details.

Before being a professional brewer, did you homebrew? If so, how many of your homebrew recipes have you converted to full scale production?

Yes, I did homebrew. I wouldn’t say any of the recipes were necessarily converted to full scale production, but rather that any beer I’ve brewed (as a homebrewer or professional) has influenced subsequent beers.

If you did homebrew, do you still?

I haven’t homebrewed since 1996.

What is your favourite beer that you brew?

I really like the concept of our winter seasonal, Snowstorm. The style changes every year, and it’s always our most anticipated seasonal. As the tagline goes “Much like snowflakes, no two Snowstorm beers are alike”

If you have worked in other breweries, which other beer did you enjoy brewing, and why?

I enjoy the process of brewing, so it’s not necessarily about the particular beer you are brewing.

Of the beers you brew, which is your favourite to drink?

That’s a little like asking which child is your favorite! I like them all and drink them all. But, if I have to choose which one I grab for the most, I’d say Schell’s Pils.

How important is authenticity when making a new beer, in terms of flavour, ingredients and method?

It’s important to a point. However, with technological improvements in malting and brewing over the years, it’s probably equally important to understand why certain methods were historically used. In the end, it’s about the flavor of the beer in the glass, not how you got there.

If you were to do a collaborative beer, which brewery would you most like to work with and why?

That’s a tough one, as I have a lot of friends and folks I respect in the brewing industry. However, if I had to choose one, I’d go with Yuengling. Think about it, the two oldest family owned breweries in the US collaborating on a beer. The beer websites would hate it!

Which beer, other than your own, do you wish you had invented?

Probably either Anchor Steam or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Both those beers were forerunners of today’s brewing industry.