What’s the Difference? Share your Side-by-Side (2022)

I wouldn’t judge

I had my first Weihenstephaner yesterday and immediately wanted another. I think if I’d had it alone today, I’d have the same reaction. After the tasting, I think the same would be true for the Paulaner.

Prost!


Side note, the GF came home and saw me doing my tasting and grabbed a Paulaner from the beer fridge. She had opened it hadn’t poured it, luckily, and I stopped her b/c I figured she’d pulled the out-of-date bottle I had positioned more prominently than I should have.

A future side-by-side was held in place because I had a capper from my home brewing days, but it’ll have to be this weekend now.

Oh, and she got a fresher beer for herself.

 

Playoff baseball is crazy! ANyhow, figured I'd jump in to start this weekend with the old vs new Paulaner Oktoberfest Märzen showdown. By old, I mean best by 8/22 and by new I mean best by 5/23 - so about nine months apart. The old beer was opened last night but resealed within a few minutes, so ignore the head differences (left is the old beer), as they nearly evened out. Also, with different lighting, the beers looked exact in body color and clarity.


On the nose, the older beer has a bit of a fruity note when compared to the more freshly baked bread of the newer beer. In the Oktoberfest tasting thread, a few of us described old Paulaner as generically "flat." And I must say, that bears out in this tasting. The old beer is more dirty and mineral-driven than the fresher beer's malt sweetness and relatively bready makeup. The bitterness in the fresher beer is a tad more crisp, whereas the older beers bitterness seems tied to the mineral vibe I am getting.

So, a pretty straightforward comparison where an older beer seems older in mostly expected ways. In this case, the out-o-date beer isn't that bad, but it is definitely lacking against what it likely once was.

 

Forgive my curiosity and/or ignorance, but is the non-blended in the foreground the ‘22 straight and the blended in the background the mixed “MOAG” from 20169/16 iterations?

 

Nice. I haven’t had a Full Nelson in quite a while, but your description of it fits with what I remember about it.

 

Pretty sure that's the first Braggot side-by-side we've had in almost two years

 

Figured I'd do another Oktoberfest comparison, since it's one of the most fall-ish days of the early season. Got the last MLB divisional series game on in the background as I popped open the Paulaner Oktoberfest Märzen (again) and a new find (oddly enough), Spaten Oktoberfest. The latter has a date of 7.23 on it while the former has 5.23, though I'm guessing there's a possibility they might be made at similar times and just have different length freshness periods.

Anyhow, on the pour into the oversized glasses, the Spaten beer is just a tad darker than the Paulaner, though it's within a degree or two. The Spaten head is maybe a quarter shade lighter, and both have caps that behave similarly.


The nose of the Spaten Oktoberfest wafted towards me as I shifted glasses around and I noticed an attribute I thought I associated with the beer - a dose of a metallic note I sometimes get in German imports. Digging in, it's definitely there, but there's a bit of grassy and leafy hop aromas with some dry medium toast. It also sort of has that "beer-like" vibe to the aroma.

Paulaner has a more malty, bready, and perhaps even caramelly aroma. The hops aren't jumping out as much, and the beer seems to have a fruity edge to it today (it has been less fruity in other comparisons).

The Spaten is fairly unique compared to other Oktoberfests I've had this year. The opening taste is a rush of a bunch of the stuff from the nose, but then it settles in. First sip, I wasn't digging it, but after shaking off the unexpected I grew into it. It has a mildly sweet pumpernickel bread flavor to it that starts about mid-taste. The bitterness is actually more up front, with more heavily toasted malts making up the later notes. There is even a little nuttiness before the finish, which does have a mild grass and metal linger.

Paulaner starts a little more husky than bitter, and more in control of itself overall. It's definitely sweeter than Spaten up front, but not as much as the nose indicates. The difference kind of evens out given the stronger malt presence in Spaten's back end. Paulaner is a little heavier in feel, though Spaten ends up being more robust in its flavors. Also, Paulaner cleans itself up a little more quickly.


One last thing - as I eased through the tasting, the two Oktoberfests did seem to grow a little bit closer to each other; mainly I started noticing some of the "darker" bread notes from Spaten in the Paulaner. Perhaps I was sipping a little too close together to find differences (ironically), but not always and I was having some pretzels throughout the tasting.


One more last thing - given the previous last thing, I decided to combine the last couple cL of each. The nose suffered the most. The feel evened out and the Spaten's heavy toast/pumpernickel/nutty notes still stood out in the back of the taste, but they weren't as stark in contrast to the opening as they were in the beer by itself. For some odd reason, it seemed to fall apart quite a bit before I finished it.

 

In the end, I was enjoying the Spaten a bit more this afternoon, but I think that is mostly because its flavor profile was a "new" experience for me during this Oktoberfest season.

 

A cold and rainy evening had me wanting a warming beer. Near the front of my fridge was the last bottle of Founders Ultimate Oktoberfest, a beer that I felt behaved more like another style, perhaps like an old ale. I happen to have a single of those left in the same fridge, North Coast's Old Stock Ale, which happens to be a beer that, independent of style, I thought the Founders brew might resemble. This comparison is mainly just to see how far off I was.

Founders Oktoberfest pours lighter and clearer - more of a copper golden to the rusty brown of the North Coast beer. From different angles, the Old Stock has different levels of physical clarity. Founders showed a bigger initial head, but they end up at about the same spot.

Old Stock has a medium dark bread aroma with a promise of some bitter hops. There's also some fruit scents in the mix. Founders Oktoberfest has a vague resemblance in both hops and fruit, but the barrel fills in for the part of any bread note I got in the other. Founders seems a bit more "bright" in that non-quantifiable quality of how I expect it to feel.

Old Stock starts brown sugar sweet with notes of berry and some dark fruit. Bitterness counters well enough with some spice and maybe some pine that never pierces the beer's malty veneer. Ultmiate Oktoberfest also starts out sweet, but with more of a honey and turbinado sugar edge to it, which includes some influence from the barrel's former resident. There's some earthy fall spice to counter to the sweetness, but they're more balancing of the whole than creating their own thread of flavors.

I could argue Oktoberfest is "brighter" and definitely a bit lighter with a cleaner finish, leaving me with a feel experience that is more different than I found in any of the other categories. So, there are threads of similarities that make me feel ok with my thought that Founders Oktoberfest wouldn't be out of place in the old ale category, as meaningless as that confirmation might be