Recently, my brother John made it out to AZ from Durham to celebrate my mom's 85th Birthday. We really had a great time and it was nice to spend some time one on one with my brother. Needless to say, there was no shortage of beer tasting, both homebrews and commercial examples.
One of the things we decided to do was a blind taste test using the craft beer tasting game I designed. In typical "men" fashion, we really didn't take any notes or pictures to document the event.... This would have been a perfect time to record a video of the event and post to YouTube. Oh well, maybe next time ;)
However, there were a few things we learned (that I can remember at least):
Most of us prefer the FestBier style over the Marzen style
American breweries are starting to push out lighter Oktoberfest beers, similar to the ones in Germany
The German versions almost always were preferred over their American counterparts
The best surprise Fest Bier we had was Warstenier Oktoberfest. All of us were impressed with the malty backbone and hop-forward finish. Apparently they added hop extracts in this years batch and it seemed to work out well.
The best American version we tried was likely the Trophy Oktoberfest Bier, basically a lighter Marzen style. The malt character was rich and delicious but it still finished fairly dry and refreshing.
My brother John scored the most points in this 3 round beer war - Congrats!
It was an epic weekend! I recall that the Jack's Abby was really good as well. The HB was probably the all around favorite German version. Looking forward to the next time!