Blogtoberfest
Lost in the hopped up haze of the modern beer climate, Oktoberfest might not seem so important anymore. This annual festival, which to many Americans has become synonymous with beer (more on that later), has been cancelled this year due to COVID-19 - this is not the first time, think “Beer In The Time Of Cholera” - with good reason. For over two hundred years, millions of people have travelled around the world to Munich to attend and drink millions more liters of beer. Sounds like a bad idea in 2020, right?
Seeing as Oktoberfest would have started just a few days ago, what better time to spotlight some of the things that I find important, interesting, or particularly useful and edifying about this long running tradition as it relates to our modern beer world. Strap on your lederhosen mein lieblings, we’re going festing. Auf Wiedersehen - O’zapft is!
The “It’s only Champagne if it’s grown in the Champagne region of France” Fun Fact: Despite its name, Oktoberfest takes place in the final weeks of September leading up to the first Sunday in October - this came about basically because the days are longer and warmer.
History:
Ok, let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first. This hasn’t always been about beer in the same way I imagine the Super Bowl hasn’t always been about commercials. The OG Oktoberfest was a big ol’ royal wedding. The festival grounds are still named after the Crown Princess - Theresienwiese - or, for the cool kids, d’Wiesn. This wedding was accompanied by a horse race and (presumably after a few steins) the locals had so much fun, they said, “why don’t we do this again next year?” They have been saying this since 1810.
As the years went on, more traditions developed that have turned Oktoberfest into something more like the world’s most popular State Fair. Nothing like a modern beer festival - no one waiting in line with a token for a double IPA here. So while there are pretzels, sausages, dirndls, lederhosen, and carnival rides - let’s get to the beer, shall we?
Breweries that can honest-to-goodness call their beers Oktoberfestbier: Spaten, Hacker-Pschorr, Augustiner, Löwenbrau, Hofbräu, Paulaner. These are breweries within Munich whose beer is sanctioned and served at Oktoberfest every year. The connotation of what an Oktoberfest is has changed over time but these are true Oktoberfestbier.
Oktoberfestbier and Märzen vs. Festbier:
Beers consumed at Oktoberfest are lagers, and you may recall from the first post in this series, lagers are fermented at cooler temperatures than ales. März is the German word for March and the hearty beers, called Märzens, brewed in large quantities at that last cool time of year, before refrigeration, were just what happened to be available for this royal wedding in October while brewing could only safely resume in late September. The first decades of the Oktoberfest, before modern kilning, a much darker, perhaps even smoky style of beer was served - until Spaten introduced the modern Märzen.
This is the rich, bready, and slightly sweet copper-to-amber lager that probably comes to mind when you think Oktoberfest and has been what the American craft brewing movement has generally looked to when trying to replicate the style.
As attendance and (let’s be honest) consumption grew, Augustiner introduced a lighter lager called Edelstoff that became more popular in the fest tents than the richer Märzen. This prompted Paulaner to codify what is now colloquially known as a Festbier in 1990 - a beer with lighter malt and higher perceived hop bitterness equaling something dryer and more drinkable - a rich golden helles (light-colored) lager to help cope with lederhosen.
While the rapid expansion of craft brewing in the US has led to breweries replicating the spectrum of styles represented in the Oktoberfest oeuvre and not just the Märzen, the general style is extremely influential to the history of American craft beer beginning in the late Eighties. It’s important to recognize the Oktoberfest-style as a bellwether for the increasing desire in the American palate for a greater depth of flavor and how it influenced the seasonal marketing cycle of beer in the States for decades.
Pretzels were harmed during the writing of this blog. Prost!