(Your attention is directed to this week’s installment of “40 Years in Beer”: Part 93: Beer, circus, and the Great NABC vs. Big Red Liquors War of 2003.)
As our schoolteachers gladly will attest, repetition is an inescapable element of their working lives.
Students in second grade this year may comprise different faces, but the lessons are the same as those taught to last year’s cohort. Level by level, building from the previous ones, we’re introduced to the basics, intended for us all, reserving more advanced concepts for those who show aptitude and interest.
And so it transpires that just about every year, I find myself repeating certain “Hip Hops” columns, as with the following essay about the annual appearance of Oktoberfest lagers and pumpkin ales, both typically brought to us stupidly, numbingly and needlessly out of season.
It turns out that there is no substitute for actual facts, even when gazing lovingly at an ephemeral Instagram post while hoping something might be gleaned by sheer osmosis. I have no interest in celebrating Oktoberfest in August via the proliferation of irrelevant costumery, and although my kitchen skills are passable, I lack the patience to cook the requisite Bavarian spread.
But making do is an attainable goal. Decent brats and kraut always can be procured, and a six-pack of Festbier purchased in early August is capable of being stashed until the weather cools to seasonal appropriateness. It’s all about the beer with me, and so I’ll be opting for the classic examples of what has become a three-way style.
As for the pumpkin ales, I simply refrain; all the more for those who actually like them, because I generally do not.
American consumerist modernity incessantly compels me to display my allegiance to its imperatives. But I differ, and my sense of self owes to principled resistance. That’s what conscience is all about, as well as pride, but none of this makes sense if we, as beer lovers, abandon education about beer.
The broader our base of knowledge, the less often we’re likely to be duped ― to be fooled again. Alas, beer education has become an almost desperate, rearguard action of the sort previously confined to Thermopylae and the Alamo.
Or, my favorite kind of hoisted middle finger.
The following Oktoberfest narrative requires neither lederhosen nor participation in a stein-hoisting competition. Read it in your underwear, and listen to K-pop if that’s your thing. I do not recommend pumpkin spice Rolaids, refrigerator magnets or motor oil — but I digress, and teeter on the edge of redundancy.
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Even before climate change became an overheated topic, back in the days when such dialogues about the weather took place from the vantage point of a barstool barely cooled by humming old-school fans, summers in the Ohio Valley were capable of reaching high quotients of humid discomfort.
The advent of air conditioning solved the problem, and also made it worse by warming the globe even further. Before coal-fired air conditioning became an American birthright, front porches at dusk simply had to do.
Pre-Prohibition buckets of fresh beer fetched from the local tap house by the eldest male heir of the household, often using a bucket hanging from the handlebars, helped to ease heat stroke, although the old-timers had to drink quickly for their liquid solace to remain cool.
At least a few neighbors might offer drainage assistance, especially if a breeze kicked up.
It is now August, and a review of the prevailing weather surely reveals more of the same blast furnace intent, during which a classically-trained craft beer drinker’s thoughts have long since turned to Hefe-Weizen, Kölsch, or Pilsner; maybe even selected fruited sours, and the stray session-strength IPA, all of these being examples of milder beer styles with higher thirst-quenching quotients, ideally suited for sun, sweat and abject suffering.
However, dissonance is forever afoot, and the struggle is real when it comes to seasonal beer style creep. As usual in our post-literate era of beer depreciation, dozens of Oktoberfest lagers and pumpkin-influenced ales have long since appeared on package store shelves and at your favorite local tap house, some as early as mid-July.
But aren’t these styles commonly associated with colorful autumns, German drinking marathons and crisp, nippy evenings out in the patch with Linus, waiting for that Great Fermentable Gourd to rise?
Yes, they are, and no, these days it hardly seems to matter to anyone. The rowdy modernist angel on my right shoulder says go ahead and enjoy the premature bounty, while the traditionalist pedant on the right disagrees.
Who wins?
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From the moment they’re weaned with a sip from daddy’s can of ice-cold Coors Banquet, spitting it violently to the ground as the sort of liquid abomination even pre-schoolers can discern, aspiring beer aficionados know that the most famous Oktoberfest gathering of all takes place in the Bavarian capital of Munich.
I’ve attended Oktoberfest in Munich on two occasions, and the oft-told stories of delightful excess are variably accurate (afternoon locals are far better than nighttime tourists).
Servers toting anywhere from two to ten of the deliciously full Masses rushed past. Pretzels the size of large plates were being eaten. Still standing at the door, I beheld this veritable city of beer, and as I started to enter, a greenish-hued man staggered past me and began vomiting violently next to a steel support beam.
Finally, it seemed that I’d found my home.
For more than two weeks, delirious throngs descend daily on a prefabricated beer city, paying airport prices for liters of lager, devouring sausages, schnitzel and rows of chickens on spits alongside the random roasted ox, and carousing until the early closing time, when they’re not-so-gently corralled into the temperate September night.
That’s right, September.
Oktoberfest in Munich always begins in September, and usually only the last two or three hangovers extend into the festival’s namesake month; nowadays the festival often is extended to conclude with German Unification Day, a public holiday on October 3 (as in 2026).
Why September for Oktoberfest?
For one, northern European summers historically were shorter than ours, and harvest celebrations still can begin as early as late August. In Munich, a 19th-century royal wedding fete coincided with the usual fall revelry, providing a sufficiently convenient excuse to affix an earlier start for October’s fest, as intended to innovate some quality autumnal beer drinking time, subsequently renewable annually for the next two or three centuries.
Many beer styles we know today are of European origin, evolving over the ages according to slower agricultural rhythms. Before refrigeration, it was too hot to brew in high summer, and so brewing schedules were tailored to accommodate.
Oktoberfest-style lagers intended for autumn consumption were brewed in late winter and early spring, then aged (“lagered”) until needed, which is why they’re sometimes called Märzen, from März, the German word for March.
Märzen typically is more complex in design, and colored in tawnier shades of amber, brown and orange, while Festbier looks little different from an attractive golden Dortmunder. Both are crisp, clean and offer malty flavor profiles with the discreet, yet firm presence of classic Bavarian “noble” hops.
Märzen and Festbier are an epicure’s sheer delight, pairing as well with loaded pizza or enchiladas as the fowl, beef and pork devoured at Bavarian harvest galas.
American craft-brewed versions of Oktoberfest can lean Märzen or Festbier depending on an individual brewer’s whim. Some are rigorously true to style, others not so much, although usually American-brewed Oktoberfests fall somewhere within the identifiable spectrum, solid if not superlative, and it’s been a good while since I experienced a real head-scratcher.
My own mental cheat sheet reminds me to revel in the differing guises of American Oktoberfest, and enjoy them just the way they are.
Your bullet points:
- Old School Märzen: Märzen is the traditional style. It’s fuller and maltier, hops minimal, with an amber to brown color.
- New School Festbier: Festbier (or Wiesn, after the “meadow” in Munich where the fest is held) is a rich golden color, milder than Märzen, fuller than Helles, crisp, clean and very drinkable.
- American Oktoberfest: American Oktoberfest most often is a fun style hybrid, sometimes Märzen, other times Festbier.
Now go forth and forage. And if, for a fleeting moment, you’re thinking an Okto-Baumkuchen with Red Wine Jelly and Cherry Brandy-fest is a good idea, unfriend me now.
And, those of you chronically unable to speak the noun “beer” without prefacing it with the adjective “cold,” get your laggard butts up to speed.
Hip Hops: Cold beer conversation (a little truth, a little frustration)
Speaking of atrocities…
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In relative terms, pumpkin ale is as newfangled as Märzen and Oktoberfest lagers are venerable. There are Colonial American antecedents for the use of pumpkins in brewing, but it wasn’t until the craft brewing movement, and perhaps Halloween’s transformation into the year’s most favored occasion for vapid adult cosplay, that a new generation of pumpkin-inspired creations appear.
Some brewers use pumpkin as an active flavoring (and even a fermentable ingredient), as with Dogfish Head Punkin Ale. Others, like Shipyard’s Pumpkinhead, add an array of pumpkin pie spices. Alcohol contents typically are moderate, but Schlafly’s is “imperial” at 8% abv. There are so many of them now, formulated in myriad ways, that groaning store shelves yield a diverse bounty of labels for an errant pumpkin fan’s sampling.
Differences aside, concoctions redolent of pumpkin-laced imagery seem most appropriate for the period of cooler weather between Halloween and Thanksgiving, and yet, as with the Oktoberfests, we always see them in summer’s peak roiling boil. The problem for beer buyers with limited storage space is if they wait too long until the ideal autumnal season arrives, there’s a risk of the pumpkin ales being sold out.
Those First World problems, yet again. I prefer the rarer persimmon ale, but by now, you might be asking, “Who the hell even cares?”
My answer: “SOMEONE must at least try to uphold educational standards in the post-literate beer world.”
Indeed, today’s craft brewery can produce any style of beer, any time, year round, irrespective of the season and the prevailing temperature. Somewhere in a hothouse, a pumpkin is being grown, and nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon and ginger can be procured at any supermarket.
Each ingredient required to brew an Oktoberfest-style lager, including authentic malts, hops and yeast from Germany, sits ready and waiting to be ordered, whether it’s February or November.
Brewing technology long since usurped agrarian tugs of seasonal romance, and the prerequisites of marketing, pre-selling and delivering seasonal beers to an eager public shift the very meaning of the word “seasonal.”
These days it implies limited overall availability, not a time of year; if you want a chillier venue, notch down the home thermostat or head to Baffin Island. Otherwise, hurry up and get some, because after all, by late September shelves need to be cleared because that’s when Christmas ales arrive (and those, I genuinely like).
Is it Valentine’s Day yet?
The verdict is no mystery. Ultimately, as with so many other examples of societal decay (why we can’t have nice things), seasonal beer style creep occurs because we as consumers actually favor it.
Those in the beer biz adapt, and we’re all relatively happy save for perennial Grinches like me. Overall, whichever beer gets us through the long, strange, enduring night … in the final analysis, it’s all right.
And yet for me, the classicist (not classist) angel’s voice is most insistent.
Hip Hops: Count me as a beer classicist, but not a beer classist
Although it is unrealistic in the modern world, I must admit to a stubborn, nostalgic and almost elegiac wish that seasonal beers like Oktoberfest and pumpkin ale remain wedded to a time of year when sweaters are worn, not bathing suits, even if this means waiting for the first cold snap of the season in January.
I don’t own a kitschy fairytale Bavarian costume, and likely no longer can drain a liter Mass of Festbier. Neither was I able to negotiate an entire Schweinshaxe (pork knuckle) the last time one appeared before me at a German restaurant in Philadephia.
But for me, Oktoberfest should be celebrated in autumn, not summer; principles, and all that.
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Previously at Hip Hops:
Roger Baylor is an entrepreneur, educator, and innovator with 44 years of beer business experience in metropolitan Louisville as a bartender, package store clerk, brewery owner, restaurateur, writer, traveler, polemicist, homebrewing club founder, tour operator and all-purpose contrarian.
As a co-owner (1990 – 2018) of New Albanian Brewing Company Pizzeria & Public House in New Albany, Indiana – founded in 1987, 1992, 2002 and 2009 – Roger played a seminal role in metro Louisville’s contemporary beer renaissance. He was beer director at Pints&union in New Albany from 2018 through 2023.
Roger’s “Hip Hops” columns on beer-related subjects have been a fixture since 2005 in Food & Dining Magazine, where he currently serves as associate editor and contributor. He is a former columnist at both the New Albany Tribune and LEO Weekly, and founder of the NA Confidential blog (2004 – 2020). Visit RogerBaylor.com for more.
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