Jack Van Paepeghem works at Meridian Pint and is a Certified Cicerone® You can read his previous post about homebrewing here.
In America, Oktoberfest unfortunately resides in the category of celebrations like Saint Patrick’s Day or Cinco de Mayo where history falls to the wayside and the focus of the festivities is getting wasted on indiscriminate beer and booze while mocking traditional garb and customs. Fortunately I’m here to judge the beer found in those ridiculously massive and tacky boot glasses and not the people wielding them. In fact, Oktoberfest was originally dedicated to the celebration of the marriage of Prince Ludwig I and Princess Therese of Bavaria in the year 1810. The celebration included horse races, brass bands, food aplenty, and beer, of course, in the expansive fairgrounds known as “die Wiesn.” The ceremonial tapping of the cask which kicks off the party has even historically determined the political attitudes toward the Mayor of Munich based on his success in letting the beer flow properly to the people. But the beer in the cask has not always been what we know as “Oktoberfest” beer.
You may remember the story of how the German Pilsner came to being by modeling itself after its slightly older Czech brother in the year 1842. Well, the evolution of German Oktoberfest beers begins just one year earlier in Vienna, Austria where brewer Anton Dreher had begun making toasty amber beer by using British-devised pale malting techniques and employing a clean bottom fermenting yeast which leaves some residual caramel sweetness. This was the birth of the style known as “Vienna Lager;” try the Devils Backbone version for a spot on interpretation of the style or Elliot Ness by Great Lakes Brewing Company for a hoppier and higher alcohol version. But here’s where it gets tricky. Dreher was working with Gabriel Sedlymayer of Munich’s Spaten brewery and the two decided to cold condition, or, lager, the beer in caves during summer months which would be ready to drink by late September to October. The beer was referred to as “Märzen” because it was brewed in March and contained a slightly higher alcohol content to preserve it through the summer months.
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