Bitburger Brewery Releases Festbier

Looking forward to this one

 

Nice! And it seems like they are doing their own thing. Doesn't seem like a traditional Marzen or even quite like the modern golden Festbier, and it is a little higher in abv than either typically is. I am happy to see a German brewer pushing boundaries, or at least as much as the Germans do.

BTW, I loved Triple Hop'd.

 

Looking forward to this. Hopefully, it will help to prevent people from continuing the idea that Festbiers can't be amber. But I know it won't.

 

Aren't most of them burnt orange? I know the beers at the actual Oktoberfest are pale, but even within Germany there are still quite a few darker ones around. A lot of them are even designed for export since that's what we expect over here in the US.

 

The first thing a lot of folks around here will do is check the label's date code.

"Hits the market"? I wanna know when the beer inside hit the bottom of the bottle..."

 

This one looks similar to Hofbrau Freising's Festbier, with the coppery tinge.

 

They own Benediktiner, if this year's Bitburger is similar to last year's Benediktiner (IMO 2019's best Oktoberfest) I'll stock up.
I'm not sure what they mean by “German style” on the bottle

 

Michael, I personally did not pick up a "coppery tinge" from my bottles of Hofbrauhaus Freising Festbier (see photo below).

In my detailing of this beer in my NBS post I stated: "Golden yellow with a white head."

But which glass is used for serving the beer, and ambient lightening conditions, can yield differences in appearance.

Cheers!



https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-sunday-week-722.600217/#post-6318816

Cheers!

 

Heck, just differences in perception apparently. Looking at your picture I would say that a slight copper note is what differentiates the beer on the right to my eye

 

The wide and varied definitions of "full-bodied" always make me chuckle. So what would they call Guinness Extra, or Optimator? Obese? Rotund?

I admit that this reminds me of Warsteiner's venture into the style, and the use of caramel malt makes me screw up my face a little, but I'll give this one a chance if I see it. I thought the Bitburger reputation would get the Triple Hop'd into stores around me, but it never showed. Maybe the season will get retailers to put this one on shelves.

 

Yeah, could be. The Festbier looks golden yellow to me. I suppose we all have our individual visual perceptions (which is not surprising).

For completeness the Bitburger Festbier pictured in the OP does not appear golden yellow to me; the Hofbrauhaus Freising Festbier and Bitburger Festbier appear markedly different to me. YMMV.

Cheers!

 

If it's anything like Benediktiner Festbier, I'll be buying it by the case. That was my favorite Oktoberfest last year as well.

 

The discussion about the color of Festbier, Oktoberfests, and Marzens has been a great sense of annoyance to me for years now, so I'm going to vent for a second.

In 2013, I released a beer branded as "Oktoberfest" for the first time at Blue Pants Brewery. It was 90% Vienna Malt with 10% dark Munich malt, fermented with Augustiner's lager yeast and 5.5% ABV. It was criticized by a bunch of people in Alabama for not being a "real" Oktoberfest because it was too pale. The color was a light orange. It was still a very popular beer, but due to the critics of the color, I decided to write a blog post about it. The next year, I was studying in Germany at Doemen's Academy (in Munich) where on Friday's, we did beer history and style tastings. The example of Marzen that was given to my class was a bottle conditioned Augustiner Festbier... Pale in color. We continued to brew that same recipe at Blue Pants and eventually the color became less of a topic of debate. I think that Sierra Nevada's collabs being the same color as our's helped people understand that we weren't just making shit up. Before that, I think people were heavily influenced to thinking that Oktoberfest beers should all be like Sam Adams which I personally think is WAY too sweet. In 2017 I released the same basic recipe in Tombstone, AZ, branded as "Festbier" and it was like starting over at square 1 with people saying that it wasn't a real Oktoberfest because it was pale. The reason we went with "Festbier" was to try to avoid that since many Americans insist that Festbier is a different think from Marzen/Oktoberfest. In a textbook that was published for VLB Berlin's curriculum (Technology Brewing and Malting) it is stated that "Vienna malt is used up to 100% for the production of "Marzen" beer, festival beers, strong export beers..." later in the book in a section for Marzen it is stated "Nowadays, increasingly two types of Marzen are brewed: a pale type... and a dark type" And a separate section specifically for Festival beers says "... they are mostly pale beers, and more rarely dark beers..."

I think that in America we tend to narrowly define styles and then use the application of the style too broadly.

 

I wish that beer was in stores by me so I could try it.

I gotta assume you both mean at a similar price too.

 

6.2% ABV fits right in with the Festbiers. HB is 6.3%

https://www.oktoberfest.de/en/magazine/eat-and-drink/the-six-munich-breweries-at-oktoberfest

 

I couldn't say what color most Festbiers are, but all German Oktoberfestbiers are Festbiers brewed for Oktoberfest... no matter what the color. I didn't mean to start a whole thing in this thread... because the ever-present nit-picky focus on color of these beers is exactly the opposite of what I'm getting at. Similar to what @honkey dealt with, I could easily imagine someone here reviewing this Bitburger beer and giving it a low score for being "too dark for a Festbier." The thought pushes my buttons.

 

Hah! to that last one from @zid. For the record I enjoyed the Freising the most last year but wound up buying (and drinking ) more of the Benediktiner. A case where the slight edge of preference is beaten by a larger difference in cost.

Regarding the color, I just happen to still have the photo from last year's tasting:

Left to right:
Freising- Benediktiner- Hofbrau Munich- Paulaner

So make of that what you will

 

Wow, that HB looks dark -- odd lighting?

My favorite Festbiers: Spaten Ur Marzen, HB Festbier, Kostritzer Festbier -- one Amber Marzen, two Wiesn Fests -- all correct to-style, all correct for gullet dropping.

 

I really enjoyed last years sierra neveda. I hope bitburger is brewing something similar.