Your Top Oktoberfest Beers

Spaten Oktoberfest draught is very good.

 

Post Road Pumpkin Ale is a Brooklyn Beer Co. offering, NOT SA!

 

So because of some feedback here, I decided on that Ayinger. Made a special tip to my local Beer&Wine specialty store for it and to nab me this year's Sierra Nevada Beer Camp before I missed my chance. I'm impressed. A lot richer and dark than I am used to in other Octoberfest beers I've tried. Not "dark" in a traditional sense, but deep and colorful. It was amazing.

So... you guys like Great Lakes too, eh? Don't know if I can find it here in the Pacific Northwest.

 

My local has only got Weihenstephan Hefe. I'm happy with that.

 

I am referring to the list which had Post Road as one of the better offerings--I am aware it is not a SA offering. This list had SA as "avoid" and the Post Road as a good one. This baffled me because I think SA Octoberfest is good and the best thing SA does. Post Road was a flavored chemical mess.

 

This thread got me to go and pick up Great Lakes O-fest. I also got Sly Fox, which I've had before and liked. The SF was solid, but the GL blew it away. Very impressed!

 

Compare it to Spaten, Paulaner, or Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfests -- Ayinger is orange-amber to their copper colors (in the Amber Märzen, of course).

 

Heady Topper Octoberfest
Pliny Octoberfest
Abrasive Octoberfest
Head High Octoberfest
Enjoy By Octoberfest

 

A friend of mine just sent me this link. Normally, I feel like when a large media outlet puts out any sort of story on beer (or a list like this) its pretty dumb. I actually feel like the beers on this list are legit.

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/09/16/top-10-oktoberfest-beers/

 

Sorry, but when I see Leinenkugel's Okto on the list I know someone's not steering the boat to the pier. And this isn't a knee-jerk reaction to Leinie's, I like some of their stuff, but the Okto is just thin all around.

I also find it funny that H-P beat out Paulaner by a couple standings, they're pretty much identical this year.

Wish I could try some of the others they list, but I haven't heard of a couple. Surprised Shiner isn't on the list, it's actually pretty good.

 

Yeah- I'll just ignore 1 thru 5 and then it seems about right.

 

I wouldn't be too quick to discredit some of the more mass-produced ones. I've found Sam Adams Octoberfest to be pretty good. I realized that I don't like the style as much as I thought (I, in general, don't like lagers that much) but Sam Adams and Leinies are decent enough (the former more so than the latter). Wasn't too impressed with Weihenstephaner, Ayinger was the best of the German-made ones I had.

 

Agreed. The first half of the list, though, is worthless. And not surprising considering the source. They couldn't even match the correct beer label picture with beer #3.

 

Oh man- that is such a blunder. I bet Thirsty Dog is incredibly pissed off about that one!

 

Indian Wells starting the list had my eyes rolling.

 

No Great Lakes Oktoberfest = someone's really missing out!

 

Hacker-Pschorr gets my vote. Just thinking about it makes me want a brat with kraut and a pretzel.

 

In the 10+ years I've been pursuing good beer, I've only had one drain-pour. It was an Indian Wells - Blackout Stout, IIRC.

 

Replace the 2nd one with SurlyFest

 

I haven't seen journalism that piss poor since ESPN's Suckernet (Soccernet). They were bloody awful at spelling errors, identifying the wrong player, etc. You name it, they fucked it up, right proper.