It’s one of the most notorious confusions in beer and fodder for endless lager-head fansplaining: Why is our American “Oktoberfestbier” a toasty, sweet amber lager rather than something closer to the sublimely dangerous golden liquid that Bavarians actually drink by the liter at Oktoberfest every year?
Or, to frame the question a different way: Which beer is the real Oktoberfestbier?
It’s a trick question. The answer depends on which Oktoberfest you mean. Which year or era gets to define it?
If we’re going back in time (let’s go!) to any of the fests in the first five or six decades since the famous royal wedding and horse race in 1810, we’ll almost certainly be drinking a red-brown Münchner lagerbier—essentially a proto-dunkel. In 1841, Spaten Brewery’s Märzenbier made its first appearance at Oktoberfest, officially establishing the beer style. Then in 1872, Spaten introduced a new amber Märzen lager bearing the Oktoberfest name. This beer wowed the crowds, and nearly 120 years passed before another brew would seize the festival’s foamy throne.
If we’re headed back to the later 19th or early 20th centuries, we’ll have more choices—a strongish, amber-colored, Vienna-like märzen is invariably there, but (depending on the year) so is a darker lager, a paler helles, an export lager, a weissbier—and, from 1895 to 1900, there is even a pilsner.
However, if we’re going back to the future to the next Oktoberfest we can expect only one type of beer in the big tents: a strong golden lager, softly sweet, yet with a light balancing bitterness and drying finish. It is palpably stronger than your daily helles—yet, ideally, it is brewed to be addictive and consumed in quantity.
The six breweries allowed to serve beer at the Oktoberfest today—Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Paulaner, and Spaten—are the only ones in Germany allowed to call theirs “Oktoberfestbier.” These breweries are essentially a legal cartel serving beer to a massive and eager audience.
That’s tricky. My educated guess: It happened gradually, picking up momentum as the big beer tents increasingly adopted clear glass mugs instead of opaque steinkrüge. (Film clips from the early 1960s show both still in use, with a relatively pale beer in clear, dimpled mugs.) Another source of confusion is that beers labeled as märzen can sometimes be pale and golden in Germany. And why not?
If you read American texts about Oktoberfestbier, you might encounter a few dubious, recycled facts. One is that the beer at the Wies’n all went golden around 1990—implying that it happened over the 1980s—or that Paulaner was the first to introduce a golden festbier in the 1970s. However, Oktoberfest programs from the early 19th century make it clear that there were paler beers alongside märzenbier at least as early as 1895. It just took them a long time to take over—and it probably happened in fits and starts.
Another frequently repeated “fact” is that Augustiner was the first to introduce a golden beer to the Wies’n in 1953, with its Wiesn-Edelstoff. However, those old programs also make it clear that Augustiner was serving its Edelstoff Hell alongside its märzenbier as early as 1929 and for some years thereafter.
Regardless, festbier is the word we typically use for this lighter-colored style in North America, to distinguish it from the richer amber lager that we often call “Oktoberfest.”
So, how did American brewers decide to slap the O-word on an amber lager that tastes like caramel? I’d argue that it’s because we essentially embraced the idea that Oktoberfestbier and märzen are the same thing—because they often were—but then we go and brew our märzen with exaggerated malt character and sweetness.
Maybe there’s a place for that. It’s always exciting to see those “Oktoberfest” beers appear on shelves in late summer and early fall, and we’ve come to identify them with the season—the urbane alternative to pumpkin beer. The amber color seems to mirror the turning leaves, and its malty Maillard flavors find their friends in a range of foods at family gatherings.
But the main problem with our usual American take on Oktoberfest and märzen is this: It’s not especially drinkable. It’s got character, sure. It often tastes good in 12-ounce quantities. But there are not many that lend themselves to drinking by the liter, and then maybe another liter—which ought to be the point, right? If your “Oktoberfest” beer can’t honestly be drunk in Oktoberfest quantities, maybe you ought to choose a different name. It might be a good beer, but it’s not a fest beer.
So, first of all, why did we settle on that one style? Maybe it’s because American brewers (and beer writers, apparently) rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story—and the story of “March beer” is a pretty good one.
Part of the story is that a 16th-century Bavarian duke ruled that there should be no brewing between late April and late September. So, brewers had to make plenty of beer in the spring, and brew it stronger so it would last through the summer. It’s a neat piece of history that adds a veneer of mythology around Oktoberfest, whose brewers have been able to use artificial refrigeration for about 140 years now.
Much later, Spaten is said to have introduced a “märzenbier” in 1841, and by 1872 was calling it Oktoberfestbier. Also from 1872, another tale: The famous Schottenhamel tent needed more beer, so Josef Sedlmayer of Franziskaner-Leistbräu sold them a stronger one in the Vienna style—and that beer came to be sold as Oktoberfest-Märzenbier.
American microbrewers were brewing Oktoberfest-inspired beers by the mid-1980s, with Samuel Adams Octoberfest first appearing in 1989, tasting of caramel (its grist includes caramel 60) and no doubt influencing many other brewers.
We’ve mentioned the Märzen style’s amber hue, which lands between 8-17 SRM. Additionally, the style calls for a rich malt profile of toasted bread coming from Munich malt. A light floral hop presence should offer balanced bitterness and the beer should finish clean and dry. A decoction mash is often used to bring even more malt flavor to the forefront. Traditional Märzens finish around 5.6-6.3% ABV and 18-24 IBU.
Festbiers aren’t all that different in terms of ABV or IBU. When it comes to color, however, they shine deep yellow to gold and measure between 4-6 SRM. They also hide their strength behind unbelievable drinkability. Gone are the notes of toasted bread, replaced instead by Pilsner malt aromas of light toast and dough. Infusion mashes are the norm here. Hop bitterness is kept light and floral but supportive.
Both styles ought to boast a persistent white to off-white foam stand. You know, that airy, slightly sweet, irresistibly hypnotic foam. The kind of foam you don’t forget. That’s what you want.
To ensure appropriate hop spice in your Märzen, Festbier, or Oktoberfest alternative, you mustn’t overlook high-quality German hops, especially the following varieties:
And finally, the yeast: For brewing clean German lagers, you want to accentuate the malt flavors. Any ‘clean-fermenting’ lager strain with minimal ester production (and the patience to let the beer mature fully on a delicate cold lagering schedule) will work well. If you’re up against a deadline, try using a lager strain which handles warmer temperatures without excessive ester and phenol production, in order to accelerate the primary fermentation and Diacetyl rest stages.
The golden beers served today at the Wies’n by the six Munich breweries are more like amped-up helles or export-strength lagers. They range in strength from 5.8 to 6.3 percent ABV. The IBUs are invariably in the low to mid-20s.
The starting gravity is almost universally 13.7°P—that’s 1.056—so the range of alcoholic strengths gives you a sense of how well attenuated they are, relative to others.
If you want to brew a convincing and addictive version of that type of festbier, here is our best advice:
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Nathan Rice
Michael C