American Craft Breweries are putting out more and more Oktoberfest beers each year. We decided to review some of them. Its tough chosing a favorite so we invite you to do some tasting of your own!

Stoudt's Oktoberfest

Appearance: Goldy copper, quite white head
Smell: Just malt... smells that we normally find in lager... bready malt

Taste: Bready... in a good way. Malty, but not sweet. A little breadier than average. This has a nice bittering hop flavor. It's not a bitter beer per se, but it taste a bit more bitter than most Oktoberfests that we've tried

Why we like it:
1. A little hoppier than usual
2. Super easy to drink
3. We can't think of anyone who wouldn't like it

 

Flying Dog Dogtoberfest

Appearance: Darker than Stoudt's... More amber. The head is darker too.
Smell: Clean and sweeter than Stoudt's. Less bready. 

Taste: Sweeter... way less bitter. Very very smooth and even... good finish. Only sweet up front, but not in the finish. The flavor builds nicely as you drink and really make you want to have another.

 Why we like it:
1. So smooth!
2. Very traditional (and sometimes that's nice)
3. AWESOME label by Ralph Steadman.

 

Buzzards Bay Oktoberfest

Appearance: Rich copper color, off white,
Smell: Rich bready tones

Taste: Holy crap this tastes good. It's richer tasting than many Oktoberfests we've had, but still very smooth and very drinkable. We happened to get a six pack that was bottled less than a week ago, so it's pretty much as fresh as you can get. The downside is that unless you live on the south shore in MA, you probably can't get it. So why are talking about it? Because IF you do live on the south shore or can drive there, it's worth it.

There's a nice spice to it, we don't mean actual spice but the grain and hop combination blend to create a very nice balanced flavor

Why we like it:
1. Richer flavor than many Oktoberfests
2. Smooth (we say that about almost all of these but hey it's true and that's why Oktoberfest time of year is awesome)
3. The "spice" is a nice unique flavor that we really enjoy

Paulaner Oktoberfest

Appearance: Medium amber off white head (hey it's all the same style, so no shockers here)
Smell: Bready, a bit sweet

Taste: Nice malty sweetness a little hop spice, and overall a damn good traditional Okotberfest. We personally get a keg of this for our Oktoberfest party each year. As far as traditional German Oktoberfests go, this is our pick. We tried a few last year in a blind taste test and this won out. This is the first time we've had it this year and it still tastes awesome. Don't get us wrong, we love a good American Oktoberfest, but it's good to see what inspired those to be created in the first place.

Why like it:
1. It's from Munich, it's in the REAL Oktoberfest
2. Its our favorite REAL Oktoberfest beer
3. It's been brewed for over 360 years, no mystery why it tastes awesome

Berkshire Oktoberfest

Appearance: Darker than many others. Off white head.
Smell: A little sweet... a little boozy... a little bready

Taste: A little too sweet for an Oktoberfest. A little boozy for style. Fruity, and not in a good way.

We've had some great stuff from Berkshire. Their Coffee Haus Porter is killer! Unfortunately, this is just not up to par. Don't overlook their stuff, just maybe pass this one up. Dieses Oktoberfest bier ist nicht so gut.

 

Victory Festbier

Appearance: medium amber a bit redish.
Smell: Smells like an Oktoberfest beer... OK let's be honest, we've tried six or so Oktoberfest beers now, they all smell really similar

Taste: While the smell might be similar for many, the taste is not. This beer is VERY clean tasting, it loses some of the malt funk (funk isn't a bad thing, this is just different) and adds a nice bitterness that we'd pretty much expect from Victory. We love Victory and this beer is what we'd expect them to put out for an Oktoberfest. It feels like an american oktoberfest but isn't overdone in any way. There's just enough hops to make it feel like it's from Victory without ruining the style.

Why we like it:
1. Another great beer from Victory (we swear they don't pay us to say this, we really just think their beer rocks)
2. Little more hops makes it a little more tasty
3. Goes really well with food (even Kung Pao Chicken...which we're eating right now)

Well, as we've said before, we here at DrinkCraftBeer.com like local beer. But you don't have to be small to be local. Having produced 105,000 barrels of craft beer per year, they're definitely one of the bigger breweries in Massachusetts. And, with their IPA, 100 Barrel Series and an array of other quality brews, they are definitely putting out some delicious and drinkable beers! We corresponded with Michael Smith, one of the brewers in their Boston facility, about how he got his start, what he likes about brewing, where he sees the industry going and more. Here's what he had to say:

DCB: How’d you get into brewing? Did you homebrew?
Michael Smith: My mother gave me a homebrew kit for my twenty-first birthday.  It really opened my eyes to the fact that people actually make beer—it doesn’t just come from the package store.  I read the Charlie Papazian book, then some Michael Jackson, and really became interested in all the different styles of beer and how they evolved.  I am fascinated by the convergence of history, geography, economics, science and good beer.

 

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A couple months ago we began noticing an interesting trend. People who used to bring light beer to a party were now bringing Blue Moon, a witbier made by Coors. For us this is both good and bad. It's good because people are looking beyond a typical light beer, but we felt like people were missing out on so much. The selection of witbiers made by craft breweries is quite vast and we wanted to help showcase some of the other options out there. In our minds there were much better offerings than Blue Moon, but we wanted to see what other people thought.

In order to test our theory, we pulled together four witbiers: Blue Moon, Avery White Rascal, Haverhill Brewery Whittier White and Allagash White. We gathered a group of friends - with the offer of free beer it wasn't hard - and began a blind taste test. Each taster was presented with four glasses, each with a sample of a different beer. We asked them to simply give impressions of each and rank them from best to worst. With that said, surely you want some results.

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When Dave Higgins, one of the brewers at Wachusett Brewing Company, invited us to check out their brewery we gladly accepted. As we've mentioned in the past, it's no secret that we're fans of local beer. To be honest, though it's almost in our backyards, we'd only tried a couple of their offerings. Everybody knows their blueberry beer, but we wanted to see what else was going on there. We met up with Dave on a very rainy Saturday morning and began with a full tour of their facility. Having been to a fair number of breweries, we're used to seeing the same old things as far as equipment goes. For the first time in a long time we had to ask questions about the equipment, and there's a good reason why. Wachusett was started by three Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) graduates; this place was built by engineers and you can tell. They built their own mash tun, converted milk tanks to brite tanks and the list goes on. To be honest we've never seen anything like it, and it really was impressive. 

Our tour ended and we sat down to speak with Dave, it's here our interview begins:

DCB: How did you start brewing?
Dave: I did some brewing at home, like a lot of home brewers. Did a lot of home brewing, a lot of self education, everything I could get my hands on the internet and came with that knowledge. Totally came here just to get my foot in the door bottling wise. I worked as a cook at a restaurant before I came here. They told me my reputation preceded me as to how clean the restaurant was, how good the food was, temperatures. They basically said OK, we're going to teach you our system, you have the basic knowledge, and I basically flourished here. It's basically the perfect environment if you don't mind getting dirty and getting tired there's a lot to be taught and learned.

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We here at DrinkCraftBeer.com want to extend our congratulations to the winners of the Great British Beer Fest's American Cask Ale Competition. We had some notable locals and friends win awards and would like to give credit to all! The results are:

Gold: Opa Opa - King Oak Milk Stout
Silver: Gritty McDuff's - Gritty's IPA
Joint Bronze: Gardner Ale House - Facelift IPA & Three Floyds - Romulus

Above: Dave Richardson, Award Winning Brewmaster at Gardner Ale House

Congratulations to Dave Richardson at Gardner Ale House, who we recently had the pleasure of sitting down with and sampling his beers! Opa Opa is always putting out good stuff as well. While we haven't gotten out there yet, their reputation precedes them. Way to go to probably one of the most heralded US breweries, Three Floyds! We will be speaking with them on our road trip in September. And, Gritty McDuff's, way to go! We will have to make our way up to Maine soon.

Anyway, shoot any of them a congratulatory email if you're so inclined, and tell them DrinkCraftBeer let you know!