Founders Ultimate Oktoberfest BBA Marzen

5 ounces the legal TTB "Serving Size" for beer over 7% if brewers voluntarily use the government approved Nutritional Label on their beers.

So, a 16 oz. can serves you and two friends.
(As the purchaser, you get the ounce of dregs.)

 

Well, that's really my whole point on this beer -- it a muddy mess that really shouldn't have been called a Märzen.

As to "science," I *did* use the emoji license.

 

There's surely some flexibility in any style guideline, but I can't think of any world where a 10% ABV bourbon barrel aged amber lager is best described as a Marzen. Maybe a euro strong lager or a malt liquor.

Breweries can make their choices about marketing language, but it's not helpful to anyone who is interested in oktoberfest marzen or in bba lagers to classify this beer as a marzen. It's just confusing.

I did just look up the marzen listings and Sierra Nevada, Sam Adams, and Phase 3 have all made BA oktoberfest that are higher in abv. There's a number of other examples of BA ofest in the data base, maybe we need a new style I nominate @BigIronH to draw up the style guidelines!

 

My biggest issue (as previously stated) is how high it's being rated on these sites, especially Untappd.

So now some newbie jackwagon ticker is going to tell his buddies, "Ugh, that Spaten Oktoberfest you're drinking is just ok, but it's NO WAY near as good as the number one Märzen from Founders".

 

a what?

 

There's that, and the flip side. Someone pops into their local brewery's oktoberfest celebration and tries their marzen and enjoys it. They decide they want to explore the style, pull up the BA ratings at the store, and grab this beer and the Paulaner marzen to try. Are they going to have a better idea of the style?

This isn't @steveh 's perennial (and valid) complaint about American versions using carmel malt to poorly imitate the melnoidin rich character of the German examples, this is presenting an only tangentially related beer as an exemplary specimen. Not helpful

 

This beer tasted exactly the way I expected and hoped for based off the description.

 

Did it taste like a marzen?

 

Written by "newbie jackwagon tickers," no doubt. @AlcahueteJ

Honestly though, it just proves what we've known for a long time -- a lot of today's beer drinkers need to be hit over the head with extreme flavor or alcohol. Style be damned.

 

Maybe next year's winner will be branded: Sledgehammer Oktoberfest!?!



Prost!

P.S. Maybe I should trademark that name right away?

 

It tasted like a bourbon barrel aged Oktoberfest.

 

I think it proves that this beer is new and interesting and given the success, next season their will be a lot more bourbon barrel aged Oktoberfest beers out. Will be a short lived trend for sure.

 

Kind of highlights the silliness of putting this beer in the typical ofest categories. The winning beer has nearly double the ABV of any other contender and is the only one that is aged in a spirits barrel. So the list informs is that the tasters who compiled it prefer high abv bourbon barrel aged beers to milder, malt forward lagers.

Makes me think the rest of the ranking is less reliable since the tasters don't seem to understand or appreciate the style supposedly being sampled.

so like a marzen plus bourbon and oak flavors?

 

I took 2 bottles of this year's Warsteiner Oktoberfest to the monthly brew club meeting last night. Neither bottle was touched. It seems that a commercial local ipa was juiced enough for them. Homebrewed beer was also not as popular this month.

 

I mean, does it really matter? Like @unlikelyspiderperson said, people will probably explore other’s in the style and maybe like it

 

It doesn’t matter. This site’s obsession is the dread of someone drinking a beer that they don’t deem worthy of comparison to their favorite beer of that style. Hence the need to create endless style variations. God forbid a style should develop or take on new characteristics. No, we can’t have that. We will just call it whatever style we see fit (even if we have to invent one) since it doesn’t align with our ideals of a perfect example of the style in question. Cheers.

 

Touché my friend. I am a fan of more styles, but I also think it’s dumb to keep things a little too boxed in and judge it for that

 

Just curious-What were the mis-statements?

 

There's a lot of good info about the history of Oktoberfest here on BA and thru other sources to look up; but I'll just point out the first eye roll of Mārzen being the "signature beer" of Oktoberfest -- just not so.

While I'm unsure of their definition of signature, the beer poured at the Fest was Dunkel (or Braunbier) for many years before Sedlmayr introduced his Amber Mārzen.