Festing Through Pics: Virtual Oktoberfest

If you’re like me, and you’re not attending the official Oktoberfest celebration in Munich, you might be curious as to what it’s like. The interwebs do offer a cavalcade of websites with stories, history, dos and don’ts, and various other methods to inform those of us who aren’t actually there. For my part, I like pictures, not because I can’t read (I obviously can’t write) but because, as a wiser fella than myself once said, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

 

So I’ve searched the web and found a pile of photographs that have been taken at this year’s ongoing Oktoberfest in Munich. It kind of makes you think you’re there, and possibly makes you decide to drop what you’re doing and get on a plane to go drink some beer. What could be wrong with that?

 

Oktoberfest Blog Post Part 3: Virtual Festing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously. Why doesn’t America have a holiday like this?

 

This has been the third and final Oktoberfest blog post in the series. Hopefully, you are now inspired to a) move to Germany or b) find a local festival to enjoy. At the very least, go to your local beer store and pick up some Oktoberfest beer. There are literally tons to choose from and most of them are quite good.

 

Here’s to craft-brewed happiness… Prost!

It Means "March" in German

If you read last week’s blog, you know that we are in the midst of the greatest time of year in the beer world – Oktoberfest. Today is the first day of this year’s festival in Munich, and there are local Oktoberfest celebrations popping up all over the place here in the States. Blogger’s Note: If you live in the National Capital Region, you need to go down to National Harbor today for their Oktoberfest.

 

Oktoberfest celebrations can vary depending on where you are, but if the festival is on top of things, and trying to be authentic, there is one thing it will have for sure: Märzen. When you see Germans drinking beer out of those over sized steins and mugs (and boots), they are drinking a particular style of beer known as Märzen, which is commonly called Oktoberfest beer in the States. But what exactly is Märzen?

 

The real stuff... live from Bavaria

 

Oktoberfest Blog Post Part 2: The Beer

 

Pronunciation guide: "Maer-tsen". Pronounce the "ae" in the first syllable like the "a" in "bad". Do NOT pronounce it like the planet Mars with an "en" at the end!

 

Gzuffa!

Märzen is the historic forerunner of the Oktoberfestbier. In the Middle Ages, brewers had a difficult time brewing good-tasting beers during the hot summer months when the brew could easily become infected with airborne bacteria. In fact, the Bavarian authorities decreed that all beer had to be brewed before April 23rd, and brewing couldn’t resume until September 23rd. In order to have an ample supply of saleable beer on hand during the summer, brewers worked overtime in March to brew an extra strong and well-hopped beer that would keep for a long time. Märzen is German for March, so the beer came to be known for the month in which it was brewed.

 

In time, the March beer turned into an October beer. When the summer was over and it was safe to resume brewing again, the brewers needed to empty their kegs to make room for the new brews. That meant that Märzen had to be finished off in a hurry. Throw a little bit of merriment into the mix, and you've got an Oktoberfest with a Märzen beer party. Modern Märzen, like Oktoberfestbier, is always well-aged, usually for at least four to eight weeks. Märzenbier is full-bodied, rich, toasty, typically dark copper in color with a medium to high alcohol content.

 

Another official Oktoberfest beer

The common Munich Oktoberfest beer served at Wies'n (the location at which Munich celebrates its Oktoberfest) contains roughly 5.0-6.0% alcohol by volume, is dark/copper in color, has a mild hop profile and is typically labeled as a Bavarian Märzenbier in style, even though by definition, Märzen is a specialized Vienna Lager. It is typically brewed with dark roasted Munich and caramelized Munich malts, which give the beer its dark amber color and malty aroma. The style is characterized by a medium to full body, a malty flavor and a clean dry finish. In Germany, the term covers beers which vary in color from pale (Helles Märzen), through amber to dark brown (Dunkles Märzen). Common names for Märzen include Märzenbier, Wiener Märzen, Festbier, and Oktoberfestbier. There are six Munich breweries that supply the official Oktoberfest Märzen: Hacker-Pschorr, Lowenbrau, Spaten, Hofbrauhaus, Augustiner, and Paulaner. Blogger’s Note: I personally got into ten Spaten Oktoberfest Märzens last Saturday at my local Oktoberfest, but fear not, I did not become a Bierleichen (beer corpse)… I’m a professional.

 

Obviously, Märzens are created with care and perfection in their home land of Bavaria, Germany. However, we make some pretty good versions of the classic Oktoberfest beer here in the States. Some of the better American Märzen beers I’ve had are Harpoon Brewing Co’s Octoberfest (even though they spell it wrong), Great Lakes Brewing Co’s Oktoberfest, Clipper City Brewing Co’s Heavy Seas Märzen, Clipper City Brewing Co’s Heavy Seas Prosit!, Victory Brewing Co’s Festbier, Gordon Biersch Brewery’s Märzen, and Avery Brewing Co’s The Kaiser. All of these and many more are available at your local craft beer supply outlet. So go get some. And go find a local Oktoberfest celebration near you and drink the real stuff!

 

A Colorado adaptation of a Bavarian classic

 

Here’s to craft-brewed happiness… Prost!

Oans, zwoa, drei, Gsuffa!

Hofbrauhaus... you sure know how to throw a party

This is a public service announcement. Starting today, the 2012 Oktoberfest season has begun. Okay, so the official Munich festival doesn’t start until next week, but around the world, including here in the States, festivals designed to imitate or pay homage to the official festival will begin today.  To mark the occasion, this blog will provide its readers with a three-part series on Oktoberfest… so that when you finish reading the third post, which will be published towards the end of the festivities, you will know everything you ever wanted to know about the fine German tradition of drinking mass quantities of beer in order to celebrate… uh… what are they celebrating again?

 

Oktoberfest Blog Post Part 1: The Festival

 

Oktoberfest began on October 12th, 1810 with a festival to celebrate the marriage of the Bavarian King, Max Joseph, who later became King Ludwig I. His marriage to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen (she took his name obviously) was celebrated in Bavaria on October 17th, five days after the marriage, and was held in front of one of the gates leading into Munich called the Sendlinger Tor.  The fields in front of the gate were named Theresienwiese (or Theresa’s meadow) in honor of the princess (although the locals today simply call it “Wies’n”).

 

10L of beer at one time... now THAT is a skill

Also, in order to honor the marriage, a parade took place in which scores of Bavarians marched to the grounds. Today, it is still an important part of the festivities as usually around 8,000 people march in traditional Bavarian clothing from Maximilian Street through the center of Munich to Theresienweise.

 

Horse races were included in the festivities and the desire by the Bavarian people to repeat the races every year is what gave rise to Oktoberfest becoming an annual festival, although the custom was dropped in 1938.

 

In 1811 an agricultural fair was added to promote Bavarian agriculture. In 1816, carnival booths were added and by 1818 beer pubs were invited to provide copious amounts of brewed deliciousness along with performers. It became a great tourist attraction and a way for visitors to learn about Bavaria and its people.

 

Can you finish Das Boot?

By the end of the 19th century, a reorganization of the festival had taken place, aimed at maximizing attendance and avoiding those pesky cholera epidemics that kept popping up in the early years. The individual booths were replaced with giant halls where all of your beer drinking desires could be fulfilled (see the Broken Lizard movie “Beer Fest” for more information). Rides and games were starting to pop up as well, making Oktoberfest seem more and more like a giant carnival.

 

In the 202 years of Oktoberfest, the event has been cancelled 24 times, mostly due to cholera and war. World War I resulted in the cancellation of Oktoberfest from 1914 to 1918. In 1933, the Bavarian blue and white flag was replaced with a Nazi flag and from 1939 to 1945, no Oktoberfest took place.

 

The festival was eventually prolonged and moved ahead to September to allow for better weather conditions. In Munich, the fest lasts for 16 days, always beginning on a Saturday in September and always ending on the first Sunday in October. The only exception to this is if the first Sunday in October falls on or before October 3rd (Unity Day, or the day the Berlin Wall fell), in which case the festival will be extended to include the national holiday.

 

Inside one of the main beer tents

 

At today’s Oktoberfest, the festival begins with a twelve-gun salute and the tapping of the first keg of Oktoberfest beer at 12:00 noon by the incumbent Mayor of Munich, who shouts “O’zapft ist!” (It’s tapped!) in the traditional Bavarian language. The Mayor then gives the first beer to the Minister-President of Bavaria.

 

An interesting problem (although not overly surprising one) that Oktoberfest faces every year is people’s overestimation of how much beer they can drink and the subsequent passing out that occurs, usually right around the same time that this problem is realized. The locals refer to these people as “Bierleichen” (or beer corpses). Fortunately for the bierleichen, the German Red Cross mans an aid station of the grounds to care for them, as well as anyone else who has a medical issue during the festival.

 

To keep the beer tents family friendly, the organizers developed the “quiet Oktoberfest” concept in 2005. This rule ensure that, until 6:00 PM every day, the tents only play quiet music like traditional wind-instrument music that is limited to 85 decibels. After 6:00, the music changes to more pop music (which the Germans call Schlager) and the over-the-top party mentality, which often leads to violent behavior, picks up. I keep trying to warn people about pop music but nobody ever listens.

 

The six Munich breweries' Oktoberfest beers

Munich’s six major brewers of the Oktoberfest Maerzen beer may be found in the seven halls where there is live music throughout the day and evening.  The six major Munich brewers are Hacker-Pschorr, Lowenbrau, Spaten, Hofbrauhaus, Augustiner, and Paulaner.  Oktoberfest beer was traditionally an amber-gold lager with 6 percent alcohol, however today, Oktoberfest biers tend to be lighter in color and body than the traditional Maerzen style. SPOILER ALERT – Part two of this Oktoberfest series is going to be about Maerzenbier.

 

So now that you know the history, and a little bit about the event itself, you should feel adequately prepared to go out and find an Oktoberfest event near you. Bring your drinking hat along… you’re going to need it.

 

Here’s to craft-brewed happiness… Prost!

#SourBeerDay

It's National Sour Beer Day...
it's kind of a big deal

Rewind about a month or so ago to August 2, 2012. If you recall (and you can go back and reread the blog post about it if you don’t), August 2 was the second annual National IPA Day – a magical day in which we all reached for the most glorious pint of India Pale Ale we could get our hands on and screamed “Cheers!” to anyone who would listen via FaceBook, Twitter, Pinterest, or any other Social Media avenue we had at our disposal. IPA Day was such a huge success in 2011 that it gave birth to International Stout Day and, because it was so successful in 2012, it has paved the way for the next great beer holiday that has been created out of thin air – I mean Social Media.

 

I told you that to tell you this: today, September 8, 2012, is National Sour Beer Day!!! As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, National Sour Beer Day was hatched by some Social Media gurus in the San Diego, California area and exists in the same spirit as IPA Day and Stout Day. There are two important facets of this holiday: Step 1) Acquire and consume a sour beer; Step 2) Tell everyone about it and create what we call in the industry “buzz.” It’s all about raising individual and community awareness about a less often touted style of brew. Let’s explore a little further.

 

What is a Sour Beer?

 

Barrel-fermented and aged to perfection

No, it’s not a stupid question, because many people have no idea they even exist. As the name would suggest, Sour Beers are beers that taste… sour. The style is characterized by an intentionally acidic, tart, sour taste. In theory any style of beer may be soured, but in practice the most common styles that are soured are Belgian Lambics, Gueuzes, Flanders Red Ales, and Berlinerweisses.

 

Unlike traditional brewing, which is done in a sterile environment to guard against the intrusion of wild yeast, sour beers are made by allowing wild yeast strains or bacteria into the brew. Traditionally, Belgian brewers allowed wild yeast to enter the brew naturally through the barrels – an unpredictable process that many modern brewers avoid. The most common agents used are Lactobacillus, Brettanomyces, and Pediococcus. Another method for achieving a tart flavor is adding fruit – most commonly cherries (to produce Kriek) or raspberries (to produce Framboise) – during the aging process, to cause a secondary fermentation.

 

Brouwerij Lindemans' Lambics - a Belgian treat

Because of the uncertainty involved in using wild yeast, the sour beer brewing process is extremely unpredictable. The beer takes months to ferment and can take years to mature. Of course, modern technology is changing a lot of this uncertainty and more and more modern brewers (especially us American brewers) are beginning to get into the Sour Beer game. Epic Brewing Company out in Salt Lake City, Utah makes an entire series of Sour Beers that are quite delicious. New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado makes the Lips of Faith series, which offers quite a few sours to enjoy. Dogfish Head and Stone Brewing have also been known to dabble in the sours.

 

So how do I participate in Sour Beer Day?

 

Drinking the Sour Beer is the easy part. In order to be part of the proverbial solution, you also need to spread the word. The easiest way to do this is to take to the Social Media streets and shout it out loud – using the industry approved hash tag #SourBeerDay. If you type that hash tag into any FaceBook, Twitter, Pinterest, MySpace (do people still use that one?), or any other Social Media post, the Social Media wizards will be able to track it and… Voila! You are now part of the solution! By including the hash tag in the title of my blog post, they are now tracking the very words you are reading… hooray this blog!!!

 

You can also check out the official Sour Beer Day Facebook page.

 

Ch, ch, ch, ch, cherry bomb!

But you don’t have to stop at Social Media. You can go onto the ole’ interwebs and find a local Sour Beer Day event near you. I would suggest searching in bars and pubs with a stronger leaning towards Belgian beers as they are more likely to be doing the Sour Beer thing. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can host your own Sour Beer Day event. Go out and get all sorts of Sours and then invite your friends over to taste them. Do some research first so you can impress them with your beer nerdiness – I mean beer knowledge.

 

So now that you have been given your charge, go forth and conquer! And remember the #SourBeerDay hash tag… it’s the key to success. You can also check out this article written by one of the Sour Beer Day co-founders for further enlightenment.

 

Here’s to craft-brewed happiness… Cheers!

Working Hard and Hardly Working

Yes ma'am.

Ah Labor Day weekend - the unofficial end of the summer - one last chance to fire-up the grill and enjoy some time with family and friends before sending the kids back to school and getting on with the rest of the year. Obviously, whenever cooking outside with family and friends is involved, there is an obvious nexus to craft beer, but it would be too easy for me to just say “go drink craft beer on Labor Day” and end the blog right there. Nope. In the spirit of Labor Day celebrating those who worked hard to make America great, I’m going to work a little harder to bring you avid readers the inspirations.

 

As I just alluded to, Labor Day is about working hard and hardly working. We don’t work on Labor Day as a way to honor those who came before us and worked their tails off. Beer is not often associated with working, but believe it or not, a lot of work goes into that beer you’re enjoying. Tireless laborers who do the heavy lifting, smart guys who do the calculating, creative minded folk who figure out what to sell and how to sell it, truckers who move the beer from place to place, and then of course the stock boys and bar keeps responsible for giving it directly to the consumer… there is an army of people behind the scenes.

 

In order to honor the brewers, you have to understand the work they do. So here is a very simplified explanation of brewing – Brewing 101 if you will:

 

The way things used to look.

Each morning, the first step for the brewers as they get ready to "mash in" is the grist bill. This is the blend of malt that will go into the mash tun to begin brewing a specific recipe. Creating that grist bill involves a process of crushing the barley malt between two large rollers in the mill. This separates the husk and fractures the body of the malt to get it ready for the mash tun.

 

The mash tun is where water is added to the malt and heated to allow enzymes in the malt to break starches into sugars (maltose) leaving a liquid substance called wort. Not all the starch is converted, however, as these unfermented sugars give the beer its body (mouthfeel). The mashing process is all about making food for yeast. The blended malt and water is heated to a specific temperature. Brewers must choose their temperatures, as well as the amount of time spent at the temperatures, to obtain the ideal results for their specific brew.

 

Next, the wort is drained into the lauter tun. Here, the completed mash is filtered by gravity to separate the solids (mash) from the liquid malt extract comprised of fermentable and unfermentable sugars. The husks from the barley provide a natural filtration bed. The end filtered liquid, called "wort", is sweet, amber-colored and clear. The wort moves off to the cooker to be boiled while the spent grains are rinsed with water (sparged) to extract any remaining sugars.

 

If the brewer is environmentally conscience, the spent grains are then hauled off and used for cattle feed. Lucky cows!

The wort moves to the next vessel, the brew kettle, to be boiled slowly and evenly to ensure sterility. It's in this stage that the hops are added. Hops, as you already know, are the spice of the beer that give it its bitterness and aroma.

 

Modern day fermenters.

The boil can last anywhere from 50-120 minutes depending on the recipe and at what stages it calls for hop additions. The boil also achieves a number of other results. During this process bitter and aromatic qualities are extracted from the hops, the wort is sterilized and stops enzyme activity in the mash, and it produces the color and flavor from the wort sugars, which "brown" when exposed to high temperatures.

 

The boiled wort is then transferred to a whirlpool, where the trub (comprised of proteins from the malt and tannins from the hops) is removed. The wort is then cooled to the desired temperature in order to start fermentation, and is also saturated with air. That oxygen is required by the yeast for growth during the next several hours of activity before actual fermentation begins.

 

Next, the yeast is added and gets to work converting the fermentable sugars to CO2 and alcohol.

 

The fermentation produces heat and, therefore, a rise in the temperature of the fermented wort. The temperatures so chosen are a large factor in determining the flavor compounds produced by yeast. Primary fermentation can take up to seven days. At the end lager yeasts settle to the bottom of the tank having fermented at lower temperatures (~50°F), while ale yeasts, by contrast, rise to the top, and ferment at higher temperatures (59°-68°F) for shorter periods of time.

 

There are several other steps that can occur at this point in the process, depending on what kind of beer is being made, such as dry-hopping, secondary fermentation, potion/spice infusions, etc.

 

After fermentation the beer moves on to storage, where the beer is aged between 3-5 weeks to allow the beer to mellow and all the flavors to meld to deliver the complex layers of flavor in the beer. For some beers, an additional stage of aging can also be done outside of the tank in large wooden tuns or barrels. These barrels add a unique character to the beer both from the type of wood itself and the remaining flavors of the barrel's past use from sherry and port to Madeira and beyond. Aging in wood is another avenue for brewers to experiment and develop layers of flavor in the beer.

 

Once the beer has adequately aged in storage, it is filtered. The beer, still slightly cloudy, requires filtering to remove any remaining yeast and other insoluble matter, like protein. Diatomaceous earth is frequently used as a filtration medium. Some beers are filtered twice to achieve brilliant clarity while others, such as wheat beers, are left unfiltered for their cloudy appearance.

 

Here's a diagram. Get it now?

 

Nothing to it right? With today’s technology, much of these processes are done automatically by machines and robots, but it still requires a crew of folks to know what they are doing and monitor what’s going on. Plus, even in today’s breweries, adding ingredients like hops, spices and sometimes even malted grains are done by hand to ensure precision. There is also a lot moving parts that require heavy lifting and countless hours in the brew house.

 

Brewers are usually a goofy bunch… it comes with the territory of making an alcoholic beverage meant to be enjoyed by a responsible public. But before hardly working, they are working very hard to make that brew the best it can be… for you. How nice of them.

 

Here’s to craft-brewed happiness… Cheers!