Recently, I flew out to North Carolina to spend some quality "Oktoberfest Time" with my brother. We had a great time visiting breweries in Durham, Boone, Banner Elk and Beech Mountain. We also made it over to Charlotte to check out HopFly, Victory and Resident Culture. The beers were awesome! The main event was an incredible Oktoberfest event at the Old Mecklenburg Brewery in Charlotte. It was truly an amazing, authentic European style Beer garden and I highly recommend it!
While spending some time at the cabin, we decided to put together a blind taste test of the FestBier style. We didn't include any Marzen beers, hopefully another time....
SLIDESHOW
Our Goal was to 1) Guess as many beers as we could and 2) pick the top 3 of the bunch, in no particular order. While all the beers were very good, there were a few standouts.
1) HB Freisling, Germany - We both wrote bready, sweet, clean
2) Wayfinder FestBier, OR - No aroma, dry and clean, not as good as the others
3) Paulaner, Germany - Tasted like an older example, not great
4) Augustiner Edelstoff, Germany - Floral, dry clean, delicious
5) Tucher Festbier, Germany - Darker than the others, malty, honey, sweeter
6) Weihenstephaner, Germany - Malty, sweet, bready, clean
7) HofBrau Festbier, Munich - Clean, bready, vibrant, wow
In the end, John guessed 4 beers correctly while I was only able to identify 1...
Interestingly enough, we both picked the same top 3 beers!
HofBrau Munich Festbier
Augustiner Edelstoff
Weihenstephaner Festbier
Really fortunate we were up there the week before the catastrophic hurricane flooding. Not sure if the brewery in Banner Elk will survive and while we didn't get to Asheville, it will never be the same.
It was interesting that the top 3 we both chose would have likely been the ones we would predict that we would pick.. Too bad the Paulaner was an older example because I love that one as well but it just didn't hold up to the others in this tasting.
But...he did finish second and got a free beer in the stein holding contest! So proud...
Wayfinder was absolutely outstanding...but interestingly easy to pick out vs the bavarian ones!
Truly an epic fest bier tasting! Impressed that we were both able to pick out the top 3! Highly recommend the Olde Mecklenburg Biergarten....probably the best in the US!
https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/travel/best-beer-garden-2024/