The Molten Glow of Autumn

I can’t speak for residents of Topeka or Tuscaloosa, but here in Portland there’s an unmistakable change in the weather. The quality of light has faded from the fat, heavy gold of mid-summer to straw. The sun now sets before 8 pm. Even the midday heat, which the thermometer registers as eighty, is thinner and more fragile somehow. Autumn is at the doorstep. Soon dry leaves will be clattering down the street.

No matter how you feel about summer, this is good news: it means the Oktoberfests are coming. These, a daring person might argue, are the finest of all lagers, so rich and yet so balanced. Even a timid one must agree they’re the most underrated. So let us now delight in their annual return.

Festbier or Oktoberfest?

However, before I extoll their virtues (infinitely finer than that other fall arrival, the pumpkin ale), let me acknowledge what I couldn’t in the 280-character confines of a recent tweet. According to the Bavarian codes that now dictate such matters, we should call this style festbier, not Oktoberfest.

Their name comes from that amazing 210-year-old Munich festival that would normally be starting in about a month (damn Covid!). It started out as a wedding before quickly morphing into a general celebration, and the norms and forms took some time to codify.

Munich was a dunkel and weiss town then, so we can assume the lagers were brown and the weiss beers cloudy at that first fest. An amber-hued lager wouldn’t debut until 1841, when Spaten deployed a märzen made with Gabriel Sedlmyer’s new paler, English-style malt. And it wasn’t until 1872 that Spaten became the first brewery to call it “Oktoberfestbier”—more than six decades into the fest’s life.

Then, beginning in 1896, the big Munich breweries erected huge “castles” to serve their beer and established a monopoly that continues to the present. Only six breweries can sell their beer there—Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Löwenbrau, Paulaner, Spaten, and the Hofbräuhaus—and they have the exclusive right to call it Oktoberfestbier. All others must use “festbier” to indicate the style.

Americans, of course, ignore this. I wonder, though, if we need to put an asterisk next to this particular case of American cultural appropriation. Tons of Bavarians set up breweries in the US after Oktoberfest had begun but before the mighty six had established their cartel. No doubt there were innocent German-American Oktoberfests being brewed then. If the term entered the public domain here, one could argue it is much like the term “pilsner” Germans themselves appropriate. So, festbier or Oktoberfest—you will have to decide for yourself.

The Beer

But enough on names, let’s talk beer. Oktoberfests are, beyond their association with a festival, beers purpose-built for celebration. For centuries, Bavarian law forbade brewing during the summer (the beer would go bad), and brewing could begin only at the end of September. Breweries would therefore prepare large stocks to tide them over until fall. Märzenbier (March beer) was the stuff made before the cutoff. It sat for months, lagering until smooth as burnished wood. To be fit for celebration, a festbier may be a little bit more robust, a little bit fuller of flavor, a little more special.

It starts with Munich malt, a darker base malt than pilsner and more versatile. Breweries can add a bit or a lot, and they can choose from flavors like toast and bread crust to honey and caramel to nuts and fruit. Festbiers can be fuller and sweeter or drier and toastier depending on what the brewer prefers. Because of Munich malt’s versatility, the style has fluctuated over time as preferences change.

Modern German festbiers follow the trend toward paler, softer, almost helles-like beers. When we see photos from Munich, people brandish faceted maßkrugs of gold. But as recently as thirty years ago, they were much darker. One of my favorite American examples comes from Missoula’s Bayern, founded by Bavarian Jürgen Knöller. His is a dark version, much more so than contemporary examples. Compare and contrast:

Knöller started as a brewer’s apprentice in 1978 and learned these beers when the fashion was for darker, sweeter beers. Several years back I interviewed him and he told me:

“Now, when we were brewing back in those days back in Germany—well, put it this way: I’m still brewing the German lager beers from 1985. When you go to Germany you have some of the older breweries that still brew the same way, but the bigger ones certainly don’t do anymore. What’s different between our beers here in general is that they’re all probably a little bit stronger, a little bit darker, whereas in Germany they have gotten a lot lighter.”

I’ve been noticing that Americans seem to be heading back to the darker versions, leaning more heavily into the Munich malt. Wallenpaupack sent me a couple cans recently, and theirs is a deep orange full of dark bread and caramel. It wasn’t quite as dark as Bayern’s, but impressive. Americans are rediscovering malts, and Munich gives brewers so much to work with.

Hops are the other critical element. A great festbier uses them like spice to accent all those lovely malt flavors. My preference is for peppery hopping, but sometimes breweries prefer herbal or floral hopping. (It depends on the malt bill.) Whatever approach, hops add balance to these hearty lagers. If you’re planning on an afternoon with several rounds of a beer, it needs to wear very well. A good Oktoberfest must meet that standard above all else.

Rosenstadt sent me a six-pack recently as well, and I had trouble restraining myself and not drinking the whole thing. Their version has a delicate honey sweetness as well as toasted grain, and that nice peppery hopping I like. New Glarus’ Staghorn is another I love, as is Ayinger—which is not one of the chosen, though it’s made not far from Munich. (If you’re looking for more suggestions, this thread contains multitudes.)

I was being provocative when I suggested it could be the best lager at the top of this post, but there’s some truth there. It’s an expressive and varied style that offers more flavor oomph than many lagers. Yet it remains a quintessential session beer, with all the crisp lager character found in pilsner or helles. The pleasure of drinking them in the soft sunlight of early autumn amid a crowd of revelers is hard to beat.

We’ll have to do without the crowd this year, but at least we have the beer. Which one are you looking forward to?