Oktoberfest
Kern River Brewing Company

Pours a clear dark amber with abundant foam in the big IPA glass. Aroma of hay and a whiff of lemon. Sudsy and light bodied brew with plenty of spritz on the tongue. Malty and roasted tasting with a hoppy scratch. A faint lemony, acidic note is interesting. Less sweet than some other Oktoberfests. After some sipping it's maybe a little bitter for a Marzen but certainly quite quaffable. From the 16 oz can dated 08/31/23.

No clear date, but I believe this was packaged on 9/1/22 - consumed on 9/17/22. Poured from a pint can into my Moonlight shaped pint glass.

Bronze liquid with a lasting slim beige finger of tidy crema up top. Mediocre clarity. Fine, multi-layered lacing; excellent retention.

Nose is malty, toasty, bready, with some hints of toasted sugar and almonds. Clean, with no obvious hop presence.

Sweet bready palate entry, growing a bit more toast-forward, then drying substantially into the crisp, somewhat earthy finish. Cleanly lagered, Low bitterness throughout with intermittent noble hop presence. Suffused with malt character, though not complexity.

Pillowy, soft, medium-bodied, yet well carbonated and very gently tannic.

Well balanced, satisfying, yet refreshing example of the style. One of the better domestic takes I've had (especially on the West coast).

it was a floral, hoppy, and bitter. not the malty toast I was expecting. meh.

 

 

Classically clear amber-brown with a short khaki head that collapses under airy bubbles to a sparse film and unevenly bubbly collar.

Excellently expressive toasted malt that's lightly nutty, bready and wheaty delivers a wonderfully savory and satisfyingly comforting quality to the palate. It's a concentration of such appropriate and scrumptious flavor that's so dialed in that it's hard to put into words.

While starting off softly semisweet, round and wet, it finishes nondescriptly bitter and dry. Simultaneously, the carbonation builds to an airy light froth that firms up fairly well at first, but then dissipates to a fine nothingness into the clean finish.

My favorite märzen this year, by far--and probably ever, now that I think about it. I wish I had a few cases of this.

 

Yep, Kern did it again - another quality offering. I wouldn’t say that this one is like hitting a Daily Double or having Vana spin five S’s when you landed on $1000. But again, it’s just straight up quality like smashing a tootsie pop on a bad day when you were 7.

Peace.