How many bad German accents are going to come out of you two on this podcast? It's terrible, isn't it? It really is. We'll just have to wait and see. You're listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. My name is Roger, and I do beer here at Binny's, and I'm particularly excited because this week, we are talking about Oktoberfest beers. But Roger, it's September. Yeah, which is even better, because usually we're talking about Oktoberfest in August, or maybe even late July. But this is actually seasonally appropriate, as the Oktoberfest Festival in Munich is usually takes place in September. However, it is going to be postponed this year due to COVID-19, or not postponed, canceled, which isn't the first time this has happened. It's actually been canceled quite a few times over the years, including for disease. In the past, it was canceled for cholera. So from cholera to COVID, that brings us right up to speed. All the C diseases. Boy, really setting the tone for a light, fun podcast today. Yeah, we just right out of the gate, just chuckle hour here. It's Germany. It's the typical Malays. It's cold and serious. Joining me on the podcast are. I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's. I'm Pat. No one really knows what I do at Binny's. Nobody wants to know what you do at Binny's. Hey, I'm Chris. I do wine and drink beer at Binny's. Off the clock, of course. Always. So how about we do a little bit of background on Oktoberfest? Because like you said, people obviously think of it as an October festivity because of its name. But the festival actually starts usually towards the end of September. The whole event gets its background as a celebration, a party thrown for the marriage of royalty in Germany. Ludwig. Prince Ludwig. Ludwig. And this was back in 1810. And the first Oktoberfest celebration was during October. So if it seems bizarre that usually, you know, this festival kicks off every year in September, it was just moved up to September because it's nicer in September. So there you have it. Did the September marketing board come up with that campaign? It's nicer in September. So anyway, Greg's already almost done with his first beer. You got to finish this up, Roger. We want to drink these multi-marvels in front of us. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if we blast through all these, we need to pace ourselves here, gentlemen, much as if you were at the actual Oktoberfest. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Except we don't have whole roast chickens. We don't have whole leaders, though. I mean, nor do we have leader Hosen. I'm wearing a dirndl, so. Roger is not amused. This is a serious subject and you need to take it seriously. You ready for you guys for me to turn my camera on and reveal my dirndl? Right. I'm wearing leader Hosen from the waist down. All right. So to further confuse things here with the months, the beer that a lot of people associate with Oktoberfest is called a Mertzen, which is the German for March beer. So you have a March beer in Oktoberfest during September. Exactly. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, in the old days, you couldn't brew during the warmer months, so they'd brew in March and lager it over the summer. So that's why they had March beer. That was a formal decree by Duke Albrecht V in 1553. Just a little bit of background on how long Germans have been taking beer seriously. He forbid brewing between April 23rd and September 29th. So they didn't really know why, but they figured out the beer spoils when it's hot outside. So that began the practice of brewing as much beer as you could during March, and then they would drag it into caves and store it where it was colder. Did you say April 23rd and September 29th? Yeah. I wonder how he landed on April 23rd. It's weirdly specific. Yeah, right? It's like he had a beer brewed on the April 24th, and it was obviously garbage. But that one brewed on April 23rd. It was wonderful. He probably originally said March, and then all the breweries complained, so then he kept pushing it further and further, and he said, all right, we got to draw the line at some point. I'm Duke Albrecht, damn it. You'll stop brewing. All right. So the first style that was actually labeled a Mertzen was by our good old friends at Spaten Brewery. That's right. The famous for tons of different firsts. They were the first ones to call a beer that and label it as such in 1841. Then they actually labeled it as an Oktoberfest beer in 1872. However, as noted in our Hellas podcast, AB doesn't give a crap about Spaten anymore, does not even have a website. So instead of trying Spaten, instead we're going to try a neighboring Munich brewery that also makes a fantastic Oktoberfest that is revered in Munich, which is why we've all popped a bottle of Pauliner. I think we might want to mention that there are only a handful of breweries allowed to participate in the actual Munich Oktoberfest based on the fact that they are actually located in Munich. So. Indeed. What are they? The lucky six. The lucky six, yes. Can you guys name them? Pauliner, Spaten. Weinstiefhannen. No. No Weinstiefhannen. Auguststeiner. Yep. What's the other Pauliner associate that they have the same import company? Hackershore. There you go. Is that all? Yeah. It's six breweries, but really two of them are part of the same group. Then yes, Lowenbrau is one, which is a part of Spaten now. So it's Spaten, Lowenbrau, Pauliner, Hackershore. Is Einger in Munich? No. They're outside of Munich. Auguststeiner. Auguststeiner and Hofbrauhaus. There you go. I don't think we mentioned that. Yeah. Hofbrauhaus. Yeah. Yeah. It was tough to decide what to feature here except to exclude Spaten. Get your s*** together, Spaten. Is that just because you're grumpy? Like Spaten's Oktoberfest is available. And it is excellent. And Roger is grumpy. He's just taking them to the mat right now. Is it in a green bottle, though? Yeah. It's got to be. It is, which is silly. Whomp, whomp. It is dark enough to filter out the light, but it's still silly that they're putting in a green bottle. There are two from that list, which we do not get here in the States. Lowenbrau hasn't been distributed here for years. We still get requests for it all the time. Oh yeah, all the time. Yeah. Mainly for their normal one, not their Oktoberfest, but Augustiner, we cannot get their Oktoberfest either. We get their Edelstoff, which is like a Helles, and we get their Doppelbach, Naxxamator. So we do get Hockershorf, which is equally delicious, Spaten. Hofbrauhaus's Oktoberfest is a little different. It is more of what you would call a Festbier as opposed to a Mertzen. So over time, just as Oktoberfest closed down a couple of times due to things like war and disease, the type of beer that they serve there changed a little bit over time as well. The first Oktoberfest, it was really more of like a dunkle than it evolved into this Mertzen. In somewhere around the more modern history, around the 1980s and early 1990s, you started brewing this thing which they call like a Festbier. And it's essentially, you can think of them as like an amped up helles. It's a little higher alcohol. Slightly more malt forward. Does that mean it's like brighter and fresher and less orangey and amber? Less caramelized for sure. Yeah, right. Let's pop a bottle of Weinstiefaner's Festbier. Wait, we're doing that one first? We didn't even talk about the polliner. Yeah, we didn't talk about polliner yet. We didn't talk about the polliner. Let's talk about them side by side. Oh. So I totally agree with you, Roger. These Festbier styles are like an amped up helles. And I don't think they go quite as far as, say, like a Dortmunder export style. I think that stronger helles is a really good description. What do you think? Yeah. I think with these, I did pick the Weinstfahner one because I think it has the most pronounced hop character. I was going to go with a Hofbrau because it's from Munich. The first thing that I would say comparing these side by side, the two styles, as Mertzen is always a coppery color, kind of based on a Vienna style lager, and with lots of rich Munich malt in there. The color of the Festbier is decidedly light. I don't know if we're looking at whatever you call SRM. I mean, this is very low, six or something, five. What do you think? Not that that matters. Yeah. What's interesting is that most of these breweries wouldn't divulge much information about the brewing process. Polliner did say what type of malt they use. So they use Munich malt as you mentioned. Munich malt is by far the most important aspect of brewing Amerizen. I would think Pilsner and Munich malt is very common for this. Right. This Festbier is pretty good. Right? Yeah. I did not think I'd say that. And then usually Hallertau hops. Very typical in this area, right? Yes. Usually you're talking about like a Hallertau middle fru or this one in particular uses Hallertau tradition hops, the Polliner that is. So like classic German style. Yeah. The Weinschnefahner Festbier, they clammed up. I don't know what kind of malter hops they use. It's really clean and biscuity. It's like notably biscuity and kind of grassy with the hops. But it makes for a very balanced beer. This Weinschnefahner is wonderful. Like where you would start with a German beer and then making like an Imperial version of like exactly what Roger said, like a German, like a Imperial Helles. Yeah, I think that's right. The biscuity multi notes are really pushed to the fore, but there's a nice balance from those hops. You note that grassiness and everything's pretty much in its place here. It's fresh, it's not dirty at all. The hop profile on this is more pronounced than any other Festbier style that I've had. So that's why I wanted to have you guys try this one. So in contrast to the Pauliner, which is way darker in flavor, more... Yeah, you definitely get those real caramely Munich malt notes out of the Pauliner for sure. The point being, if we were at Oktoberfest, we wouldn't be drinking Mertzen. They don't have it there. So that's what's pretty interesting is that they only have the modern Festbier example at Oktoberfest. At the Munich Oktoberfest in the big tents. So to capitalize off of this, Paulaner now offers to the US market two different Oktoberfests. So the theme is that Oktoberfest is very confusing. The other one is Paulaner Oktoberfest Wiesen. And we used to be able to get it. I didn't see it in the store this year. So it no longer is called that. Wiesen means meadow in German. And everybody thought it meant Weissbier. I had a customer argue with me once that it was a wheat beer. I was like, no, you don't understand. It's not. And he was like, nope, you're an idiot. I can't believe I listen to beer guys here. So, yes, he was right. But that's beside the point. They got your feedback and they're like, Americans think this is a Weissbier. This is not a good idea. So now it's called Oktoberfestbier. Oh, that's way clearer. Well, you can see the motivation here because this is so drinkable compared to the richer Mertzen style. I mean, I love Mertzen personally, but there's only so much you can drink because it's rich. This polliners is not incredibly sweet and it finishes quite dry, I think, but it's a filling beer. So how many liters do you want to sell? Right. So again, in Oktoberfest, the typical serving vessel is a liter. So we're talking about drinking 33 ounces of this, which is basically like three bottles, because these are 11.2 ounce bottles. So that's a lot of beer. So you can't have just one either. Yeah. Chris brings up a good point with the dry finish on the polliner though, and it is heavy and caramelized and just malty upfront, but it does finish dry and for that reason, it's kind of quenching and you go back for sip after sip because of that nice It has a pretty good complexity. It's not as simple as many are. Well, for sure. I find it intriguing. That again, that's a good observation from both of you guys. What was interesting about that is that a lot of people's introduction to Oktoberfestbier is ironically an American Oktoberfest. Sam Adams, for example, brews more Oktoberfest beer than anyone in the world, than any German brewery. They're Oktoberfest, which I was considering. The power of middle-aged men in America. Applebee's will not go without Oktoberfest. I think that's a good beer, but it's quite a bit sweeter and richer. It's a lot sweeter. Exactly. Drinking a liter of that, for example, is hard to drink more than that, I would argue. Again, if you're in our stores, it's cool to do a side-by-side. Look for Polliner Oktoberfestbier and Polliner Mertzen Oktoberfest or Oktoberfest Mertzen. We also this year, depending on when you listen to this, and hopefully moving forward, we have these Polliner Mug sets where you get a liter can of the Oktoberfestbier, the Festbier style, the Wiesen, and a mug. Nice. Yeah. Formerly known as Wiesen. To be a formerly known as Wiesen. So, you can do your little Oktoberfest in place. You can party by filling up. You crack this monster liter can, the uber can, and try that one. So, moving on, let's do, speaking of American styles, let's do an American one here. Let's try the Great Lakes Oktoberfest. How long has Great Lakes been making this style? Well, they started in 1988. It wouldn't surprise me if they started making this shortly after. I think it was pretty early. The first time I ever went to this brewery was probably 94 when it was just a little brew pub. And they already had a really wide array of products. At the time, but they weren't available in Illinois. Loyola Chicago Rambler graduates, a little shout out. Somebody listening just went, Woo! Yeah, one of my friends who also went to Loyola. I think as a brewery... This smells like ****. This is a good beer. No, it smells okay. It smells sweet. It smells sweet and a little like... If you didn't tell me what it was, I would guess it's something home brewed, where they didn't let it go home. That is not a compliment. Okay, so initially, I don't know, something was weird in this glass, maybe because I poured it into a glass I just used or something. It's blown off and it just smells like sweet caramelized malt. Yeah. But there's a bit of a citrus to it. I'm thinking there's some American hops in here that are given a little bit of that grapefruit grindy character or something. Well, I think a lot of American breweries want a noble hop approach to this, but nevertheless, they use Mount Hood or something like that, which is Hallertow derived cross, but grown in America and has slightly different character. You were spot on, Chris. Were you reading about Great Lakes before this? No, but I just thought that. So this is props to Great Lakes for divulging all the stats on their beer. I think more breweries should do that. What do you have to lose? No one's going to be able to just completely, I can't stand when breweries imply that by sharing ingredients, you're not sharing the recipe. It's secret. Yeah. Anyway, the thing that's pretty interesting about this beer is that it's considerably higher alcohol. So this is 6.5 percent. 20 IBUs, the malt bill is Harrington, Turo, Munich, and Caramel 45. So you definitely taste the caramelization between the Munich and the astutely named Caramel malt. Then Chris is dead on, Mount Hood Hops. Okay, so American grown and noble character. Question here, you're talking about, I mean, this one compared to the two previous German examples, seems more intense and more fresh. And some of that could definitely be the ingredients you're talking about. How much of that is the fact that it only had to get here from Cleveland instead of from Europe? Well, with lagers, as long as they're made well, you don't, especially the style, you're not necessarily benefiting any from it being, quote unquote, fresher. These should have like a full on year shelf life where they shouldn't change much at all. Again, the hop aroma in the wine chiffon was a little unique in that it was kind of pronounced. That'll fade a little bit. But other than that, like the malt character shouldn't change really at all. Well, this one has a lot of fresh hops. The original approach with this long lagerine over the summer. That's a good point. Yeah. I think what you're noticing, Greg, is just that the recipes are different. Again, it might not seem that huge, especially with Americans where we're used to things like IPAs being really high alcohol, but 6.5 versus 5.8 is kind of a jump. I think you notice some of the pronounced, like some of the people might describe as a bite to the finish of this. Yeah. I agree. It is noticeable booze. It does seem to have a little bit of alcohol and a little more hops. Yeah. I would also say that the multi-character is honeyed compared to the real caramely polliner. I think you're dead on on that. Yeah. Yeah. Literally harder than I've ever thought about an Oktoberfest before. I would also say that I don't know what it is, but like the original gravity must have been pretty high to get that alcohol, and then it's relatively sweet. It's not cloyingly so, but there's definitely... It doesn't finish as dry as the polliner, that's for sure. No, not even close. Yeah. I think that they're using that two-row to boost up the alcohol, but then you've got, by having that carmel in there, like you're going to take... Well, the two-row, they have to use because it's just a base malt. Like even the polliner, the base malt probably isn't going to be Munich. That's a very expensive malt. There's probably a Pilsner malt and then Munich malt added for the caramelization. No, yeah, for sure. I know, that's what I was saying. What was interesting about the polliner, so between those two versions of the polliner, the Mertzen and the Oktoberfestbier, the malts used are the same, so it's obviously just they change the proportions. So you're still using. That's very interesting. I wonder if they just invert them. There are lighter and darker Munich malts though too, so you could use a heavier roast to make that darker color and get more of that caramel. Proving that American brewers can make Oktoberfest beer without having huge steins or that blue and white diamond pattern on the label is Metropolitan with Afterburner. Oh yeah, it's the robot. The robot's back. And he's not even wearing later hose. Oh yeah, he is, nevermind. So, speaking of transparency, this is another brewery where it's cool that they tell you exactly what we're working with here. So, Metropolitan Afterburner is made with Vienna, Munich, Pilsner and Biscuit Malts, as well as some roasted barley, which is kind of interesting. And then it is hopped with Horizon, Mount Hood, and Howler Tower Middle Fruit. What is the difference between roasted and malt? This beer is awesome. What's the difference between roasted and malted malt? Roasted malt is going to be slightly blackened, right? I mean, it's going to have a roast. Well, it's roasted barley, right? Barley, so it's not malted barley. It's unmalted. So, it's not germinated? Correct. So, it doesn't crack open, and so it's undergoing rest. It's adding no fermentable sugars to the mix, but it's probably adding some character and some body. Just for flavor. Yeah, I find- It's probably adding some bitterness that's not hot bitterness. Green bitterness. Would be my guess for some of it, right, Chris? Yeah, I would say so. I think when I think about roasted barley, it seems very grainy, kind of husky to me and has a little bit of bitter edge. Yeah, it adds a real grainy note to me. This is really good. It's really complex. I mean, the malt character on this is phenomenal. I mean, I think this is just hands down one of the best. Best at Oktoberfest. I know how popular Great Lakes is. This beer is so much better. Like orange, rind, and green. Like even clove. A lot more complexity in this beer. This is awesome. There's so many flavors. I would say, amazing balance. I mean, the hops and the malts are just perfect. They're judged perfectly. So the hops choices here are pretty interesting. So Horizon is an American hop. It's from the 70s. It's kind of floral and citrusy. And then Mount Hood, as Chris said in the Great Lakes one, is basically like an American grown holler tower. That's its lineage too. And then there's some proper holler tower in there as well. So you get this really interesting herbaceousness and then kind of a floral character here. But then there's also plenty of bitterness to balance out the sweetness. So I would almost argue, you guys say this is the driest of the bunch. I don't know if I agree. I think it's the most intense of the bunch. So yeah, I think polliners finishes drier still. Yeah, I would just point out about the hops in particular, that I couldn't agree more with Greg that there's a definite orange zest thing going on as a top note. But I would add that there's almost like a honeysuckle floral note. It's honeyed and citrusy and really, really very nice. I get like a nuttiness to this too, which I think is neat, like a Walnut, again, like drier. I had this plant growing in my backyard and it smelled so much like lavender to me, the flavors that I associate with lavender. And it wasn't purple. It was white and sometimes yellow. It turned out to be purple and ivy. It turned out to be honeysuckle because of course. So if people don't, they haven't experienced honeysuckle so much. It's so aromatic and it's kind of what you associate with lavender if you've had like a lavender tea. Yeah, I'm totally getting that in this beer. There's a real floral top note, floral and citrus. I wasn't picking it up before, but you're absolutely right. Yeah, it's like orange peel, orange blossom and honeysuckle. Over like graham cracker, of course. All right. Well, that one was really, really good. Good work, Metropolitan. Yeah. Which one should we try next, Roger? Let's do the buckle down. Is this guy's? These guys are where the bears practice, right? No, that's brick stone. I always confuse buckle down and brick stone. They operate out of a crazy small space on 47th Street, and they've made kind of quietly are making some sneaky good beer, especially lager wise. This has a celery fermentation character on the nose. I kind of like it, and I think it's because it's atypical and way out of style. This is way too happy for the style. Yeah. It's like burnt caramel. I don't like this at all. I like that celery description. It reminds me of like coriander seed and- Hot dogs? Yeah. Celery salt or celery seed in the nose. It's a ballpark in a can right here. It's the perfect combination of beer and burst. I like these guys' other beers a lot, Roger, but no thanks on this one. Don't like it. Okay. The celery thing is apt. It's very hoppy. I just taste it. So hoppy, right? Yeah. Really, I would say out of bounds for the style, but it's an American version, so what are you going to do? I'm glad you agree with me. That's why I picked it. I think that there's a lot of people that are tired of Oktoberfest and think if you've had one, you've had them all, whereas there's lots of people that love them. I thought that. American-wise, I think a lot of them fall into the same trap of being overly sweet and real carmely and heavy to the point of you don't really want to drink another one. Well, this certainly isn't that. While you said it yourself, the best-selling Oktoberfest beer in the world is exactly what you described, bottled by Sam Adams. Right. Well, again, I think this is... people have asked me before, like, what Oktoberfest should I try that will be something different or like will get me to... I really love IPAs. I should try an Oktoberfest beer. That's exactly it. This tastes like an IPA... Well, not an IPA. It tastes like a heavy pale with the malt dialed way up. And what Pat is describing with the celery, I think I'm interpreting as the herbaceousness from hops. And that's kind of, you know, my jam. So it's why I'm not totally turned off by this, although I instantly recognize that it does not fit in with the previous four. Yeah. I mean, the malt character is really in the background here, and it's quite dry compared to almost everything. Yeah. I think, too, what you might be experiencing a little, Pat, was, you know, when you try some of these beers and there's a lot of similar characteristics, your palate can get pretty fatigued pretty quick. And I think you're probably, especially having done the Metro before this. I had originally wanted to do this before the Metro, but I let Greg do it anyway. So I think maybe you'd like this better if you had had it before the Metro, because I think that might have kind of, I don't know. I think that's a good point. I think that this was a little out of order, just based on the body and the amount of residual sugar and the hop character. It really accentuates, like, kind of cleaner flavors than any of the other ones, say, for the... Well, let's go back and forth... . Vine Stiff Hunter. Yeah. I don't know. Give it a couple more sips. Give it a chance. The way that I described it when I was writing about it in the Beer Buzz was kind of like a cross between a Festbier and a Meritzen. Yeah. Well, it's kind of, you know, it has, like, some of the hoppiness of a hoppier Festbier, like the Vine Stiff Hunter, but it's not as carmelier or heavy as, like, your typical Marker. Did you say what the hops are here? I mean, I'm also getting a citrusy note on the top with this one. You know, I thought that I had it written down somewhere, but they're not very sharing on their website or anything. So short of asking the guys over there what they use. Trade secrets. Not public knowledge. Buckledown doesn't want to share the secret recipe with this one because nobody makes one like this one. Yeah. But anyway, if you're looking for something different, this is different. Yeah. I would say there's a strong distinction between the way the malt is presented. The body is light and more attenuated than the others. Maybe they coax out more fermentable sugar and left fewer unfermentables behind. Yeah, I think it's 5.2, so it's not overly strong. That's a little on the lower side, actually, for Oktoberfest, which is worth noting. I think they were trying to appeal to a craft audience that's, you know, looking for something that you can drink a whole liter of and get another liter right after that. Well, I think that's probably true. For what it's worth, I went back and forth between the Buckle Down and the Metro, and I think I actually prefer the Metropolitan. It's a little more fresh, even though it's not as hoppy, and I kind of like that. The Metro is, you know, more complex, for sure. I'm just saying that I think sometimes, personally, I've drank quite a few of these this year already, and I've always enjoyed it in the past, and I just think, like, the way your palate, especially when you're trying, like, I've experienced this Yeah. When you drink something as, like, the fifth stout that you tried versus drinking it as the first beer you've had of the, you know, sitting and down of the tasting or whatever, you're going to taste it in a different way than if it was, like, number five. That's all I was getting at. Yeah. So, we rounded things out with the best Oktoberfest of them all. Yeah, so a lot of people kind of just say that the Oktoberfest argument begins and ends with Eyinger. So, I country wants to drop a bottle, because I love this brewery. You just said that like you were rolling your eyes, but I also suspect that you might actually agree with that point of view. He totally agrees with that point of view. And they do have the best looking bottle cap in all of the beer business. It is pretty. Yeah, it is pretty awesome. Looks like a great beer. And their beers are always... No, I fold the divulge. I love Eyinger. I love all their beers. What is not to love? I mean, you guys fought over the opportunity. You fought over the opportunity to pick one of their beers as your top island, top desert island beers. So, yeah. Yeah. Shocker. Which also that beer is just so fun to say. Look at how beautiful this beer is. Look how it comes in a pint bottle instead of an 11.2. Thank you, Anger. It smells so inviting. It is just soft, sweet caramel, and like there's this tiny, tiny kiss of hop, but it's like, it's caramel without smelling sweet though. Oh, it's so awesome. Pat's admitting that he likes a beer. And Doran says, Guten Tag. Oh, and it finishes dry too. This is the most perfectly balanced beer I've had since I had a hams two nights ago. Look at him. He's dancing in his pants. So this brewery is located 15 miles outside of Munich, so not eligible to participate in Oktoberfest, but they do brew one of the best Mertzen styles on the planet. It's a real snappy finish. It's like this, like, I don't know how to describe it. It's definitely grainy, but it's also this like orange marmalade with a baking spice on top. Yeah, you know, it's reminding me the honey character on the finish. It's kind of reminding me of the Great Lakes a little bit. I wouldn't necessarily say this is dry. I mean, it's delicious, but it's got a little sweetness on the finish. It reminds you of the Great Lakes and that for every great beer, there's a not-as-great beer. Take that, Great Lakes. You like the Great Lakes. I do love Great Lakes. I agree, Roger. This is not a beer that finishes totally dry. There's so much caramely sweetness to the malt. And it just... even the aroma is so... It finishes perfectly balanced, that's for sure. But for how sweet the aroma is, I would expect it to finish with a more cloying character, you know? True. Yeah. The head is pretty gorgeous. I'll give it that. That's pretty incredible. Roger and Chris don't know how to pour beer. Well, Chris is repeatedly trying to show off his Eyinger glass, and we're just ignoring it, no matter how many times he faces the logo at the camera. I'm trying to show off the beautiful head like Roger said. Look, I'm drinking mine in an HP glass. Sacrilege. This is one thing that all of the Eyinger breweries, beers have in common is very carefully crafted, and the head retention is always remarkable. I think you can say that across the board. Yeah. This one too, I think, it drives home the idea of, so we were talking before we even started recording about how Oktoberfest is still a beloved beer style. You'll meet some of those people, like I mentioned earlier, that say all the Oktoberfest tastes the same. But more often than not, you meet people that really get excited for Oktoberfest beer season. And I think that's for a couple of reasons. One, I think in our beer culture right now, it's so saturated with hoppy beers, that this is an excuse to drink something that's cool and celebrated, yet it's malt-centric. And then secondly, they're pretty easy to drink, depending on the producer. I think most of the ones we tried today, you could easily drink these beers and they pack a little bit of a punch. So if you're drinking a liter at a time and they're six percent alcohol, probably going to have a good time. No wonder that this party has a reputation for people wandering pantsless out of the tents. So yeah, the ABV on this is 5.8 and I was just thinking to myself how I could just see drinking this without thinking at all and being like, well, done, another one please. Yeah, it's velvety smooth and rich and eminently be drinkable. It's really, and again, that always comes down to balance, which is what Pat was saying is that, yeah, there's some sweetness here, but it is so well balanced that you just effortlessly think about, don't even think about drinking it. You're like, oh boy, I'm done already. All right, well, I anger retains the championship belt, and that's all she wrote on Oktoberfestbiers, huh? I wish we tried the Munsterfest. I imagine that it's a little more amped up in the mall than most of these. Yeah, like most of their beers, it's an IPA pretending to be some other beer. See, that's all I want. Yeah, Munsterfest is a good beer. I know you kind of wanted to try it. I do like that it's in six packs now. I thought it was a bit of a rip-off as a bomber for that lager for like $9 or whatever. That's good news in the beer industry. We're seeing bombers kind of go away and seeing more affordable packaging. Absolutely, yeah. And that is the one thing that Einger has going against it, is that it's by far the most expensive of all the beers that we tried. But also you get a pint. Yeah, it's somewhere between a bomber. But it's like three bucks, right? It's not like $15 or it's not like $8.99. It's like $3.50 a pint. Yeah. We also sell, I mean, I think now they've had made four packs for at least five years or so now. So a four pack is like about the price of most Oktoberfest to come in six packs. So you're paying a premium, but as you could tell with how much we liked it, it's arguably a premium beer. It's definitely worth it. I mean, this is packed with super high quality malls. It's not a cheap beer to make. Yeah, and it had to get here. I mean, it is imported and it's not at a brewery that's a mega brewery. So but yeah, there's a lot of neat Oktoberfest options out there. So I think if you're one of those people that thinks that all Oktoberfest are the same, there's some stuff for you to discover potentially. And that Festbier today, for example, from Wine Schaffaner, I really, really love that beer. And it's very different. That's a new thing, drinking. I didn't realize that there was two different kinds of Oktoberfest. That's new to me. Yeah, it's relatively new at least to me. Roger hasn't shut up about that in like six years. We haven't done this episode. Yeah, I do talk about it a lot. I brought it up to Jim Cook and he didn't know, so that I thought was pretty hilarious. So before we wrap up here, the other thing that's great about Oktoberfest beer, it's an incredibly food-friendly beer. So what do you guys like to eat when you drink Oktoberfest? Salt. Salt. I was going to say, actually, like saucy barbecue would go really well with this. Like barbecue ribs, I think, would actually really go well with some of these drier beers. Yeah, for sure. I would say roasted chicken is fantastic, especially with the classic pairing. Yeah, or pork roast or something like that. I think it's no mistake that the traditional pairings here are big salty pretzels with cheese and then those salty-ass encased meats that hang and are apparently shelf stable outside on a September afternoon. Because it's so malty. You clearly haven't looked in our ham fridge next to the Whiskey Hotline office. Gross! It's so malty. And like caramel and salt go together. And this is a dialed back version of caramel. I think you're dead on that. Salted caramel. Spot on, baby. I would add, if you're a little more adventurous, one of the most underrated cuts. And this is from Chris, the Gourmand, confirming this. Pork shanks of pork hocks. Schweinhochsen. I was going to say, Schweinhochsen is like the obvious thing. You go to any try-hard German restaurant in the States, they're going to serve you a pork shank with the skin extra crispy on it, and it's going to go great with a big caramelized beer like this. Yeah, there's hardly a porkier cut to be had. It's so deeply porky. Man, that's porky. It's what pork used to taste like. That skin too. They've bred all the flavor out of pork. No doubt. Yeah, get your hands on some. It's not easy, but Hofbrau, like we said, makes a great Oktoberfest beer and they still serve that. If you want to do the whole German experience, hey, here in the States, we're not taking COVID that seriously. I think the Hofbrau house is open for business. So, it may not be open in Munich, but I think so, it's pretty amazing. I think so, for real. You guys want to give away 20 bucks? Yep. Yeah, for sure. All right, that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast, where we answer your question for a $20 Binny's gift card. If we answer your question on the air, or on the podcast, whatever, send your questions to us at comments at binnys.com via email, or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. This week's question comes from John in LaGrange, which is the most proper glassware to enjoy an Oktoberfest beer out of. That's timely. That's a good question. Is it a gigantic heavy ass mug? I think that's the most traditional. Yeah. I'm holding up that classic dimpled... A one liter dimpled stein. A Widmer. You have a Widmer stein? This is ancient. I probably had this for like 30 years or more. So if you're drinking it by the liter, you're going to want a big dimpled stein for proper effect. In Chicago, traditionally, they are plastic, and they say, German American Day, 2006. They taste like plastic, too. They taste like a moldo-rama that just fired out of the... Personally, I would try... Dolphin shaped? Yeah. I would go for another glass Chris was actually using. He was using one of those old school, Sam Adams' Perfect Pints that were the pints with a bit of a tulip on top, and they have a laser etching in the bottom to a nucleation spot, so to speak, to create some continuous carbonation. And I think the way to make these beers taste refreshing and balanced is going to be in a tall, thinner-sided pint like that, and especially something that promotes some head retention and promotes some carbonation because it's going to break up the caramelized heaviness of it, and it's going to allow you to taste and smell more of the hops, because the hop flavors themselves are really retained in the head of a beer. So you do want to have something that's going to create some foam in the beer Yeah, I agree. I love these Sam Adams glasses. They're really well designed. I drank four out of my six beers out of them today. Yeah, that's a great glass. I agree. I also would vote against the Leder mug, unless you have a whole keg of beer and you're pouring yourself. Yeah, it's time to party. Come on. Leder's. So the point of the big mugs, they're cool, but they're great when you're pouring draft because then the line on those allows for a huge tall amount of head, which is going to capture all those aromatics and it's going to look appealing, but you're going to lose the head even quicker when you're just pouring like a 12 ounce bottle of beer into a giant liter mug. So they're also fatiguing. Yeah, they're pretty heavy. Greg's arm's tired. I would say that we can't overstate the fact that it's really important, particularly when you're pouring a German beer to get a nice fluffy head on it. There's some traditions that don't necessarily promote a big head. God knows you don't want to insult the Germans. No. No, exactly, because it captures all that aroma. So pouring technique, this is important. You're always seemingly think you're told to tilt the mug or glass. Pour it straight down in a straight up mug. It's going to have lots of foam. Let it subside, pour it up. Let it subside, pour it up. You're going to get a thicker, denser head. And it takes a little longer, but it's worth it. Yeah, if you've ever watched a German bartender pour a beer, it's not a quick process. You know, it's definitely that building that head in steps and then finally serving it. Hey, friends, friends, let's speed it up. John, thanks for the question. Everybody else, email your questions to us at commentsofinnies.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube. That's true, so... But is that all? True and laughable. So, Roger, thanks for bringing these Oktoberfest beers today. Some were awesome, some were more awesome than others. And everybody, enjoy them while you can because they're going to be gone in about a month. I didn't know there was so much diversity. Apologies to you who listened to this in November. Future apologies. Then you just need, you know what to look for next year. Or get them on Closeout. All right. Well, it's been fun. Until next week, I'm Pat. I'm Greg. I'm Chris. And I'm Roger. Keep tasting.