It is possibly the world’s longest wedding reception.
According to Dr. Jörg Lehmann, director of the Staatliches Hofbräuhaus Munich and former president of the German Brewers Association, “The background of Oktoberfest here in Munich is that it goes back to a royal wedding…. And since more than 200 years, we are now celebrating this wedding. But for sure it’s no more about the wedding. It’s a big party. It’s a big event, and especially for this, we are brewing our Oktoberfest beer.”
Hofbräu is one of only six Munich breweries allowed to pour their beer at Oktoberfest. The only beer served during Munich’s Oktoberfest, explains Lehmann, “has to be brewed inside Munich from a Munich brewery with Munich water.”
A Special Party Deserves A Special Beer
Historically, beer served at Oktoberfest was of a märzen style, brewed in March and then served at the festival in September. But today, Hofbräu brews a festbier to serve in its Oktoberfest tent. The beer is made “with lots of love,” says Lehmann, only half jokingly. “That’s really the fact because the Oktoberfest is such a big mark on the calendar here that every brewer knows which tank goes to the Oktoberfest, which is then also handled a little bit in a special way.”
Ignoring whether the addition of love is Reinheitsgebot compliant, what else goes into Hofbräu’s Oktoberfestbier?
“So first of all, it has to be about 13.5 degrees Plato per definition to be an Oktoberfest beer,” says Lehmann. Typically, a beer of this gravity might yield a beer between 5.3% ABV and 6.0% ABV, but Hofbräu’s ends up with slightly more alcohol, evidence of the high degree of attenuation.
“We are using our own wells here on the property to get the Munich water, and this is also audited to be called Munich beer,” says Lehmann. “For the Oktoberfestbier, we are using not just the normal pale barley malt. We are also using a little bit of the darker Munich malt, which gives a little bit more character, a little bit more flavor. Also in terms of color, it’s a little bit darker, and gives you these caramel and honey flavors that you then have in the final beer.”
Beer at Oktoberfest is traditionally served in one-litre Maßkrugs. It is designed to be drunk in quantity. “It’s quite high drinkability, which is also part of the beer style,” says Lehmann. “It’s a little bit stronger than a normal lager beer, but it’s not that strong if you have a strong beer like bock beer or a doppelbock. I think this is really a nice balance between full-bodied and on the other hand, together with the hops and the high fermentation degree, that it’s getting a high drinkability.”
“In the past, we used a decoction mashing process, and now we changed to infusion process to underline a little bit more this lighter character,” says Lehmann.
“We are using three different strains of hops, which is Hercules, Perle and Select,” says Lehmann. “To give [the beer] on the one hand a kind of bitterness, and at the other hand, also these more floral hoppy notes and the hoppy nose…. We have about 25 bitter units.”
“Then we’re getting for sure lager fermentation, so bottom fermented yeast strain,” says Lehmann. “Doing more or less a normal-for-Germany fermentation and maturation process, which is more or less cold, starting at about nine to 10 degrees, then during fermentation going up to 12 degrees Celsius.”
The move from the more traditional märzens to the lighter festbiers served today occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. That move was to improve the drinkability of the beer. The change apparently worked. Hofbräu typically sells over 750,000 liters (200,000 gallons) of beer in their Oktoberfest tent each year, with each customer drinking two or three Maßkrugs.
Oktoberfest Beer In America
Since 2020, Goldfinger Brewing Co. has served up world-class lagers in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove. Also since 2020, the brewery has hosted an annual Oktoberfest to showcase its German-style beers.
Unlike Hofbräu, Goldfinger offers both a märzen and a festbier at its Oktoberfest celebration. Tom Beckmann, owner and head brewer at Goldfinger, explains the difference. “The way we designed our [festbier] was based on what you would consume at the Theresienwiese in Munich nowadays, which will certainly be paler and lower alcohol than a märzen. It will be a more akin to a helles or export beer in terms of that sort of honey malt character, and would finish a little bit drier and be pretty light on the hops. Depending on the style, you might have a little bit of noble aroma on the nose, but certainly a beer designed to consume liter upon liter of.”
“I would think the main quality of a märzen is in its malt character and layered malt character,” says Beckmann. “Something that we try to do is make sure that the beer is quite malty, but not cloying and still very drinkable, which isn’t an easy feat given that märzen should also be higher alcohol. So ours usually falls anywhere between 6% and 6.2% ABV. But we combine some Munich and Vienna malts along with some pilsner, do a double decoction on it just to bring out some nice body, and have more of the biscuit and bready, slightly caramel, a touch of toast, and even that similar kind of chocolate character you can sometimes get from a dunkel that comes out of the Munich malt, but not an actual like chocolate malt…. We’re focusing predominantly on how we can make that layered malt character.”
Beckmann does like to adhere to tradition—to the point of even brewing Goldfinger’s märzen in March for service in September—but that doesn’t mean he can’t have a little fun. Goldfinger experimented with different hops and even played with a thiolized yeast strain. But when his team found perfection, they stopped tinkering.
“The festbier is a simpler malt bill. It has some Munich in it, but it’s predominantly pilsner malt. For a few years, we were rotating different hops in our festbier. We saw it as a cool canvas to every year present a subtle but different version of the festbier until we made our festbier with Callista hops,” says Beckmann. “We just loved that version so much, and so did the customers. So we stopped changing it. It’s a little bit of Hallertau Mittelfrüh and Callista, but that little punch of Callista fruitiness was really nice and a good contrast from the märzen, which is Tradition and Hallertau Mittelfrüh.”
Like Hofbräu, Goldfinger brews its festbier with an infusion mash, while its märzen is decocted. And as they would in Germany, everything is naturally carbonated—krausening for dry-hopped beers, but spunding valves otherwise. Everything is conditioned in horizontal tanks. Other than occasionally playing with a specialized yeast, like the time they tried the thiolized strain, Goldfinger ferments all of its beers with the same lager strain.
Party Like It’s 1810
The original wedding celebration of 1810 in Munich doesn’t really resemble Oktoberfest today. Even a country as traditional as Germany evolves over time.
Oompah bands play in all of the Theresienwiese tents. While they play traditional German songs like “Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit,” they also play crowd favorites like “Sweet Caroline” and “Country Roads.” Though records are incomplete, most believe those latter two songs were not played at the inaugural Oktoberfest celebration in 1810.
“What’s really important is that you have the atmosphere that you’re together with friends, that you’re spending a good time around the table, enjoying a beer or two, and having music and/or singing,” says Lehmann. “For example, I was in the Hofbräuhaus in Las Vegas just one week ago. And in America pretzels are served with mustard. It’s not common here. But if the people like it, why not? It’s just about having together with the beer and have fun about it.”
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Don Tse
Living near seven malthouses, Don Tse is a freelance beer and malt writer and consultant known globally as The Don of Beer. He has been active in craft beer for over 25 years and has famously sampled and written tasting notes on over 31,000 different beers. He is the co-host of the All About Beer podcast. Don has also written for magazines and presented on beer in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ukraine and Singapore. Nobody in those countries thinks his jokes are funny.