The Last Gasps of Oktoberfest

Unless something goes horribly wrong, this will be my final Festbier review of the year, the omega of Märzen analyses, if you will. Yes, Oktoberfest inspections are on the way out.

Because this year's crop of Wisconsin Oktoberfests was, for the most part, cringeworthy – the ones I tasted, anyway – I am hoping to end on a high note. And so I look to foreign brewers to get the job done right.



To begin I am going to heed Horace Greeley's imperative and taste Märzen by Denver's Prost Brewing.

Considering that Prost brews German bier styles exclusively, one would think that their Oktoberfest would be preternaturally tasty. So far, I've found their biers to range from mediocre to very good. So, while perhaps not a shoo-in, I certainly expected this to be a really good bier.

Things began well enough as I discovered its golden hue, tinged – but only just – with amber. Certainly this would not be laced with caramel/crystal malt sweetness. Clear as day, I could see surfeit of bubbles inside. Alas, they made their way upwards to an imaginary head. D'oh!

The aroma was light toffee, bread, and some apricot. It was sweeter than I expected, yet it was not cloying with the bready scent more than holding its own.

If I had any worries about the aroma being a portent of things to come in the taste, I needn't have had them. Märzen came replete with Maillardy goodness, full of toasty bread taste. Just wonderful. It also had that nutty taste I first encountered with Victory Festbier, though less strong. Other less toasty bread flavors were joined by some great hops that were grassy tasting at first but took on a really nice flavor upon closer inspection. I did, however, find it a bit over-carbonated. Witness all those bubbles I saw.

Those hops took on some spiciness at the finish and added moderate doses of bitterness and dryness to drive away the last of the malty residue. Of Schaumhaftvermoegen there was none.

While it suffered from a touch too much carbonation and was thusly was a little acidic, this was a very good brew. It was nice'n'Maillardy and had very little sweetness. I really enjoyed the hops, especially the floral taste.



We now leave the Rocky Mountains and head to the bayous of Louisiana and Abita Brewing. Well, I am not sure that Covington is even near a boyou, truth be told. Still, the brewery likes to trade on bayou imagery, especially gators. Perhaps only gators. I don't recall ever seeing an airboat on one of their bottles.

One thing I don't associate with the creole culture in Louisiana is a German influence. I think of Native American, French, African, and Spanish but not German. But there was apparently a "German Coast" in the state's early days on the east bank of the Mississippi River. That Wikipedia article also notes, "During World War I, in a reaction against Germany as the enemy, the Louisiana state legislature passed Act 114: it prohibited all expressions of German culture and heritage, especially the printed or spoken use of the German language, in the state." Yikes!

So let's taste Abita's expression of German culture and heritage.

I begin by noting the bier's medium gold color. A good beginning as this bodes well for minimal sweetness. Clear? Check. For a change of pace I managed to pour a big head. The foam was white and loose and lasted 30 seconds or so. This was an effervescent bier with lots of bubbles inside.

Rather than caramel sweetness, my nose first caught the scent of some fresh grassy hops. Unexpected though not unwelcome. That caramel was there but tucked away in the back while a more bready smell was at the fore.

The same held with the taste. A rich bread/biscuit flavor held sway and relegated a touch of malt sweetness to a supporting role. The hops were firm but not overpowering and they had a tasty combination of grass and spiciness. While the Prost had a bit too much carbonation, here it was just right.

Those hops were let loose on the finish after the malt faded or was, perhaps, pushed out. They were pretty spicy – nearing minty territory – and made for a rather dry denouement, though not especially bitter. The Schaumhaftvermoegen was great with webbing everywhere inside my glass.

As someone who hadn't had many Abita beers prior to this one and with the ones I did have being all fruited beers, I wasn't really sure what to expect from them doing a traditional lager. I am happy to say that this was a really good Oktoberfest. It had a nice bread flavor, though not of the Maillard toasty variety, but tasty nonetheless. And the sweetness was minimized. Those spicy hops on the finish were a pleasant surprise too. I find that spicy hops clash with sweeter malts in an unpleasant way but here, with bready flavors, they were a wonderful complement.

Junk food pairing: Pair Abita Oktoberfest with a bag of Snyder's Peanut Butter filled Pretzel Pieces.



Watching Hell or High Water I noticed that Jeff Bridges character drank Shiner Bock in almost, if not every, scene in which he drinks a beer. Now I don't know if this was because the Shiner folks paid the filmmakers or if the filmmakers simply like the beer. Or perhaps a preference for craft beer is supposed to be a commentary on the otherwise gruff old-timer with a penchant for racial humor of a decidedly non-politically correct type. I suppose I was expecting to see cans of Lone Star.

I don't think I've ever reviewed a Shiner beer. Shiner is a brand brewed in the town of the same name in Texas between San Antonio and Houston. And it is brewed by the Spoetzl Brewery, named after Kosmos Spoetzl, a German immigrant and the brewery's first brewmaster and owner.

A fair number of German immigrants settled in Texas although I tend to associate the state with things like oil, steak, chili, and Tejano music. Then again, Lone Star was founded by at least one German immigrant. We're talking lagers here, a technique surely brought to Texas by Germans. And so while surely a minority culture, that of German immigrants left its mark.

Ooh. Shiner Oktoberfest pours an amber hue. We could be headed for caramel sweetness. The bier's clarity revealed a generous amount of bubbles floating upwards to a sizable loose, white head. Sweet or not, it sure looked pretty.

Yep. Sweet caramel(ine) was out front on the nose trailed by some bread and a nice herbal hoppiness. Things aren't going too well here.

While I could certainly taste caramel, I was relieved to also taste bread and roasted grains to keep the sweetness from dominating. There was a nice fizziness to it as well as some very tasty hops that were grassy and spicy.

A little of the sweetness lingered towards the end as the hops became stronger and took on some black pepper taste. The finale was quite dry and bitter, eventually washing away all trace of malt. Schaumhaftvermoegen was limited to a smattering of foamy spots with a few small patches.

All things considered, I quite liked Shiner's Oktoberfest. It ended up not being quite as sweet as the color would have you believe. Plus the bread and grain flavors were quite tasty even if they weren't toasty in a Maillard kind of way. The bier finished more like a Bohemian pilsener than a Märzen but the sprightly hop taste made for a nice, bracing libatious experience.

Junk food pairing: Shiner Oktoberfest pairs well with sharp cheddar cheese food products like Velveeta and Easy Cheese so dip a soft pretzel in some melted Velveeta dip or pointed your aerosol can in its direction.

Frankenbier: Dunkel by Prost Brewing Company

Denver's Prost Brewing is an anomaly in the microbrewing world. There's no IPx in their line-up nor any bier that is understood today to be "hop forward", as far as I can tell, and their packaging is certainly on the utilitarian side. Scantily clad women do not adorn blonde lagers while their doppelbock does not intimate that consuming it will put the drinker in extremis. Then again, their taproom may have a Citra-laced IPL on tap between Dirndl Ripper Helles and a barrel aged doppelbock called Me 262.

But I rather doubt it.

Seeing Prost on store shelves makes me kind of sad. Sad in that I feel my state pride deflated a little bit. Wisconsin was once the epicenter of American brewing led by companies started by German immigrants. Somewhere around 30% of the people in the state claim some German ancestry even today. Bratwurst is ubiquitous and towns and cities around the state have Oktoberfests in the autumn. Milwaukee was once known as "the German Athens" and today its major league baseball team is called the Brewers and games features a sausage race. It does not seem wrong for an outside observer to assume that somewhere in Wisconsin there is an all-lager or all-German style microbrewery.

Well, if there is one, I do not know about it. Sprecher and Capital, the twin pillars of our state's microbrewing industry that began by brewing German styles, abandoned that kind of obeisance long ago. Don't get me wrong, I am not arguing that Wisconsin breweries should slavishly adhere to tradition. But where they could have built on Wisconsin's German brewing traditions and melded them with the new, they instead moved away from it. The only breweries on our shelves now that I am aware of that adhere completely to lagers/German bier styles are Chicago's Metropolitan and Prost.

End of jeremiad.

Prost is one of those few breweries that cleaves to German tradition, if their website is any indication. I've already tried three of their biers and they were all quite common German styles brewed sans Citra hops, barrel aging, or souring. Today I have their dunkel which the brewery advertises as being in the "Frankonian Style". Franconia is a region in southeastern Germany. I don't believe that it's a state or legal municipal entity but rather more like the Midwest here in the States. Prost contrasts Franconian dunkels to their Bavarians cousins by saying that they are "slightly stronger and drier". And is their wont, the bier has a typically austere name – "Dunkel".

Dunkel pours a lovely copper color and was perfectly clear. My glass had a loose, light tan head on the small side that lasted only a short time. There was a smattering of bubbles inside the brew moving on up.

The aroma was full of roasted grain scents, but not of the highly roasted chocolate malts of the last dark lager I tried. Behind them was a hint of stone fruit sweetness.

There was, however, a bit of chocolate to be had in the flavor. Not near as much as was in Baba from a few days ago or a porter/stout, but it was there. Those roasted grains were here and I shouldn't be surprised as Prost practices decoction mashing which some swear gives bier that fine Maillard reaction toasty maltiness which we have here. A slightly doughy sweetness rounds out the malty trifecta. The carbonation was great adding a little fizzy bite but not enough to detract from the grainy goodness. Lastly, there was some spicy hop lingering in the background.

For the finish all those malts ceded my tongue rather hastily leaving the Hallertau hops and their herbal/spicy taste free rein to help dry out the finish with a healthy dose of bitterness. Sadly and surprisingly, there was no Schaumhaftvermoegen. It all slid down my glass to be subsumed by the last remaining liquid.

If it is indeed true that decoction mashing will give you toasty malt flavors that you just can't get any other way, then Dunkel benefits immensely from it. The roasted grain taste, including the chocolate, was fantastisch but I wish it was just a bit richer, a bit fuller. The carbonation was perfect, adding the right amount of dryness and bite. And the hops on the finish were on target with their botanical bitterness. Dunkel is 5.2% A.B.V. which I suppose is just a bit stronger than your average dunkel but it did not taste particularly drier than the Bavarian versions of the style I've had. Surely something to investigate further. In Franconia.

Junk food pairing: Dunkel pairs well with Kettle Brand Maple Bacon potato chips. I mean, German biers just demand to be consumed with pork or pork-flavored foods.

Beer Review: Weissbier by Prost Brewing Company

I am slowly working my way through the beers of Prost Brewing out in Denver – at least the ones that end up here in Madison. My introduction to their biers began with the very unimpressive Altbier. Prost rebounded with the very tasty Pils. And now I am ready to spill the beans on their Weissbier. The brewery strictly adheres to German styles, if you haven't noticed by now.

Ah, the weissbier. A wheat ale whose yeast produces distinctive flavors that can taste like banana, clove, bubble gum, et al. It was my brother's favorite bier and, since his death last year, I've been unable to drink one and not think of him. It's a bit like that song from your youth that is ineluctably linked in your brain to the bad old days of high school or perhaps to your first special someone. With a good weissbier comes my brother's smiling face and many a happy memory such as when he was singing "Squonk" by Genesis in my kitchen several years back. Objectivity and weissbier are forever separated for me.

Prost's Weissbier – they're pretty utilitarian when it comes to naming their bier – pours a lovely cloudy light gold. The haze is from yeast left in the bier as well as protein from the large amount of wheat used to brew it. I expected a bigger head than I got from my pour. What can you do? But it was a brilliant white. Sadly, it didn't stick around very long. There was, however, a goodly number of bubbles in the bier itself going up. Unfortunately, my weissbier glasses are all packed away and I'm sure they would have helped Weissbier put its best foot forward visually. Still, it looked pretty good in a shaker pint.

The aroma was great filled as it was with banana and clove. More on the banana side of things, though, which is my preference. And of course there was also wheat/light graininess too. I believe that the stylemeisters decree Weissbiers should be made from at least 50% wheat but even more is not uncommon.

Much to my delight the preponderance of banana in the aroma carried over to the taste. There was definitely some clove too, but it was less pronounced and in fine proportion for my taste buds. The wheat and malt gave a bread-like flavor which offered a moderate bit of sweetness which went well with the fruity flavor from the yeast. I tasted a little grassy hop flavor but little bitterness. And a good weissbier needs a lively dose of carbonation which this one has.

The hops are applied moderately on the finish as those tasty banana and clove flavors from the yeast fade. They take on a pepper flavor which adds some bitterness and makes for a dry finish. Sadly there was no Schaumhaftvermoegen left on my glass.

Weissbier is a very fine brew and I am beginning to think that my encounter with their altbier was an anomaly. I appreciated that the banana flavor was stronger than that of clove and they achieved a really nice balance between the two. While the yeast flavors were up front, the wheat wasn't too far behind. And the hops got their chance to shine at the end. The bier just had a nice flavor all around. The body was medium-light but leaned towards the latter. Add in a generous, but not too generous, helping of carbonation and you have one mighty refreshing bier. And it's a easy-going 4.5% A.B.V. to boot.

I have no doubt that my brother would have heartily approved.

Junk food pairing: In keeping with my brother's proclivities, I am going to recommend his favorite snack - some pretzel rods - dipped in a fine processed cheese food product sauce.

Rocky Mountain Pils Is Better Than the Alt I Had: Pils by Prost Brewing Company

The last time I had a bier from Denver's Prost Brewing Company, I was not impressed and not a little disappointed. But I'm sympathetic to any brewery that refrains from brewing beer whose style has the word "India" in it and refuses to barrel age its way into the crapulent hearts, minds, and livers of the crafty clerisy. And so I recently gave the brewery another chance and smapled their Pils.

Prost describes Pils as a "Pale German Lager" which I took to mean that it was a German pilsener as opposed to being styled after a Czech variety. While someone like Evan Rail can give a whole exegesis on the varieties of Czech pilsners, my purview is much more limited. For my palate, a Czech pils is heavy on spicy/peppery Saaz hops and has a golden color which indicates a body that neither very light nor particularly heavy. Bohemian water is known for its softness which imparts other characteristics to Czech pilsners. The German pils, as I know it, is lighter and less hoppy. Plus German hops generally lean towards more grassy and herbal flavors than Saaz do. German water hardness is, however, terra incognita.

It would probably be a good (and highly tasty) idea to get some Budvar, Pilsner Urquell, Staropramen, and the like to try to figure out what makes a Czech pilsner a Czech pilsner and what exactly soft Bohemian water does for their beers. I just have no idea how fresh the Czech piwo we get here in Madison is.

Sadly my pilsner glasses are all packed away so Pils' lovely pale yellow didn't get a chance to show itself off. It was clear, as expected. My pour gave a small, ephemeral white head. Sadly, there were precious few bubbles in the glass. Truth be known, I didn't have high hopes at this point as I expected a much more vigorous effervescence instead of the more lethargic looking brew I had before me.

However, after taking my first sniff, most of my fears dissipated in a wisp of malty goodness. Pils has a fantastic crisp cracker scent that is laced with a wonderful spicy and herbal hop bouquet. It had what I think of as a quintessential German pils aroma. But would it taste as good?

Despite not being particularly effervescent, I could certainly taste the carbonation. I'm not talking champagne levels of fizziness here but Pils has a nice little bite to it. The crackery aroma translated to a light , clean biscuit taste. While I wouldn't describe it as a big malt backbone, I could never forget that there was some grainy goodness underneath the bier's big hoppiness. Pils has a bold, complex hop taste with its showcase of Noble hop flavors. There were some sweeter floral tastes carefully blended with herbal and spicy ones in such a way as to let each stand out yet coexist tastefully. Despite the prominence of the lupulin, Pils wasn't very bitter.

It did, get more bitter on the finish, though. The malt and the more floral hops flavors faded and allowed the spicier and more pepper-like hops tastes through. In addition to a bigger hop flavor, there was a not insignificant amount of bitterness too which made for a bracing and dry finish. Unfortunately there wasn't much Schaumhaftvermoegen to be had – just a few scattered patches that were rather small.

Prost really redeemed itself with Pils to my taste because this is a great bier. Whereas their altbier was timid and watery, Pils' light body was awash in flavor. It has a fantastic light, yet not insubstantial, malt taste that is clean and not very sweet. Atop this is a remarkably multilayered hop flavor that blends floral and herbal flavors along with a kick of spicy/peppery zing and proves that hops need not taste like various tropical fruits to have complexity.

Junk food pairing: Pils goes well with soft pretzels accompanied by a generous portion of a sharp cheese food product like Velveeta.

Watery Domestic: Altbier by Prost Brewing Company

I've found it difficult to find a good altbier here in Madison. Finding a tasty Kölsch, the alt's lighter cousin, is much easier. It's by no means impossible to find some delectable alt goodness but my enjoyment is limited by the seasonal availability of altbiers that I enjoy drinking. I recommend Schmaltz's Alt by Schell, Iron Works by Metropolitan, and Rhine Heights by Vintage Brewing. They are less sweet than other iterations of the style found on store shelves. They taste more like Obergäriges Lagerbiers and less like brown ales. To my tongue, anyway.

This being the case, I was happy to hear that Steve's Liquor had begun to carry or had finally brought the fact to my attention that they have been carrying the beers of Prost Brewing Company. Prost is a Denver brewery that makes traditional German bier styles. I see no evidence of barrel aging, brettanomyces, nor a single Cascade hop in use over there. I decided to check out their altbier on a recent trek to Steve's.

As you can see from my photograph, Prost doesn't use puns as names for their beers nor do labels feature anything fancy. Just simple German austerity. How they get away with this is beyond me. I guess not trying to be clever and ostentatious makes you stick out in a craft beer crowd.

Altbier pours a rich copper color. The bier was clear with a fair number of bubbles going up. My glass featured a small ecru head that, sadly, didn't last very long. The aroma was rife with malty goodness. A rather sweet scent came first that was stonefruity but more savory, roasted grains came hot on its heels. Altbier is laden with Hallertau hops and I caught them on the nose as a restrained bit of grassiness.

Upon tasting I found that the fruity sweetness of the malt was rather like plum and that it wasn't as prominent as it was on the nose. Here the roasted grain flavor had pride of place. Behind that was just a little toffee flavor. The clean grain flavors were abetted by grassy/herbal hop flavors and bitterness. I think I was expecting more hop presence after my dreadful encounter with some senescent Uerige altbier this past summer. As Ron Pattinson noted, fresh Uerige is fairly bitter so now I expect all altbiers to be so when there is surely variation even in the brews made in Düsseldorf, the style's hometown. There was also a little carbonation to be had.

If all of this sounds pretty tasty, well, it could have been. The flavors themselves were good but I found the bier to be very thin. It had a pretty light body and the overall malt flavor tasted like the amateurish first steps of a homeopathic brewer.

The finish had that light malt sweetness fade to modicum of herbal hop dryness. No Schaumhaftvermoegen was to be had.

I really hope this was just a bad batch because I'd love to have a gut altbier year-round. Prost Altibier has all of the requisite flavors but it's just thin. The malts lack richness and depth – they have only hazy memories of Maillard reactions. I'll try this bier again but I am going to give Prost's other biers a chance first.

Junk food pairing: On the savory side try some Kettle Cheddar Beer potato chips with your Prost Altbier or, if you have a sweet tooth, you can't go wrong with a handful of dark chocolate covered pretzels.