While Germans nurse their hangover from Oktoberfest, we Americans are just getting started. There's something about fall weather that begs for the hearty simplicity of German beers.
It's a cozy brewing tradition to dive into. And you can usually drink these beers in great quantities, thanks to their relatively low alcohol content.
You'll see a big push from American craft brewers this fall to take the German style and — dare they — tinker with beers that many consider the most balanced in the world. (German law prohibits their brewers from using any ingredients beyond barley, hops, water, and yeast.)
The result? A sometimes wild, uniquely American, take on German brewing.
RELATED: 70 Great Beers You've Probably Never Heard Of
Not all German beers are for Oktoberfest, though — far from it. This style is actually a seasonal beer, also commonly referred to as Märzen (March), which is brewed in the spring and ready in time for the Munich-based festival in late September and early October.
One American take on this crisp, clean, and pale lager that we recommend comes from Two Brothers, which ages it in French Oak and ups the alcohol from the usual 5 percent to 8.8 percent. The Eisbock (ice beer), like the Märzen, is often a lager, but one that is richer and higher in alcohol thanks to a complex freezing-and-filtering process.
California's Gordon Biersch chooses to try to one-up German brewers rather than give an American twist, by strictly adhering to German brewing laws while coming up with a Weizen Eisbock that we challenge against any in Deutschland. Kolsch is one of the most popular German styles in the States and Captain Lawrence's Captain's Kolsch gives it a kiss of American flavor with Crystal hops that are grown in the United States.
And then there's a beer like Schmaltz brewing company's Human Blockhead, which takes a number of German doppelbock styles, mixes them, adds more hops, throws it in a bourbon barrel, and cheerfully stomps all over the rules. Check out all our selections below.
Two Roads Brewing Company's Ol' Factory Pilsner: Stratford, Connecticut
The Brewery: Two Roads Brewing Company, a brewery in Stratford, Connecticut. Phil Markowski, brewmaster and owner of Two Roads Brewing Company built his new brewery in Connecticut with two divergent purposes: The first goal was to brew his own beer. The second goal was to provide contract brewers a modern facility in which to brew their beers. As the longtime brewmaster at Southampton Brewing Company he knew how difficult it could be to find capacity at a modern facility.
The Beer: Ol' Factory Pils
Tasting Notes: Ol' Factory Pils is a classic pilsner in the German tradition which means it emphasizes bitterness just a bit more than the Czech versions which have a bit richer malt flavor. This is the kind of beer that we always wished was pouring out of every lager beer factory in America. Crisp, with a crackerlike malt flavor and just the barest whiff of sulfur. Ideal on a hot summer day.
Prost - Altfrankisches Dunkel Bier
Prost Brewing company has only had its doors open since August 2012, but it's already making German-style beers that taste as though they came from a Franconian brewhouse. And, in a sense, they do. Prost's gleaming 70-barrel copper kettles, and the byzantine pipes and controls that connect them, were ripped from a defunct German brewery in Franconia, then shipped to Denver. "There was no manual, so it took me six months to put it all back together, but I enjoyed it," says Prost brewmaster Bill Eye.
Eye spent the last 10 years as the brewmaster at Dry Dock Brewing, where he earned acclaim and an armful of Great American Beer Festival medals for his Hefeweizen. Prost makes a great Hefeweizen with the same yeast, but the beer that excited us most on our visit was the Altfrankisches Dunkel. The beer is an homage to the brewery that Prost bought its equipment from, and it's as toasty and delicious as any dunkel we've tasted.
Bell's Oarsman
Brewed in the German Berliner Weisse style, Bell's Oarsman combines a bracing zing of lemon tartness with a roundness that comes from wheat.
The beer is light on alcohol, at 4 percent ABV, and pairs well with a wide variety of foods — perfect for lunch on the beach blanket.
Magnolia's Kalifornia Kölsch: San Francisco, California
The Brewery: Magnolia Brewery, a brewery in San Francisco, California
The Beer: Kalifornia Kölsch, an ale
Tasting Notes: Gently fruity, finely effervescent and glowing gold, this San Francisco–brewed ale is an excellent hot-day thirst-quencher.
Our Mutual Friend Malt & Brew's Gose: Denver, Colorado
The Brewery: Our Mutual Friend Malt & Brew, one of Denver’s most interesting nanos with a killer taproom and plans to roast their own malts.
The Beer: Gose
Tasting Notes: A collaboration with the Denver Homebrew Club (one of their frequent inspirations), this Gose (a practically ancient German style of beer, pronounced gose-uh) has an ever-so-slightly salty flavor, plenty of tartness and funk, and a super-light body for summer crushing.
DC Brau El Hefe Speaks
The Brewery: DC Brau Brewing Company, which in 2009 became the first brewery in Washington D.C. in half a century.
The Beer: El Hefe Speaks
Tasting Notes: This beer succeeds where too many American-brewed Hefeweizens (a German-style wheat beer) fail: It's a clean, easy-to-drink brew that doesn't focus on spices or lean too heavily on the yeast or — worse yet — need a slice of orange to make it seem summery. Like the Germans would want, this is one straightforward beer you'd be happy to have on a warm summer day.
Bruery Hottenroth Berliner Weisse
Not your average beach beer, the Bruery's Hottenroth Berliner Weisse combines some funk, tartness and a surprising amount of complexity with an all-day-drinkable ABV at 3.1 percent. While it comes in a 750 ml bottle, you will want to stock more than one.
Trumer Pils
You've probably been told to drink traditional pilsners on hot summer days. But the pilsner is more versatile than that. This is a fresh and beguiling style that goes well with July afternoons and October tailgates alike. The U.S.-brewed Trumer Pils is made from hops, malt, and yeast shipped from Austria, where the beer was made for 400 years by the family that helped found theTrumer brewery in Berkeley, California. The beer is aged six weeks before being bottled, and the result is a golden beer with a Champagne-like fizz that's smooth and has a faint bite of hops in the finish. Expect a hint of lemon in this crisp and dry beer, which clocks in at just 4.9% ABV but has enough refreshing complexity to make it great for the shoulder season.
Victory Brewing Company Prima Pils
Craft brewers go to great lengths to differentiate themselves from mass market beer, focusing on bold styles abandoned by the big guys. The result: Brews like big, bitter IPAs and high-alcohol imperial stouts have made beer drinking interesting again. But what will improve the flavorless, yet easy-to-drink, brews that we down in numbers at the game?
Philadelphia-based Victory Brewing Company's flagship beer, Prima Pils, is one hell of a start. This golden lager is bringing the fight to the doorstep of Budweiser, Miller, and Coors, proving that a small-batch pilsner can make a difference. The Prima Pils pours with the clarity and golden color of a Budweiser, Miller, or Coors (two things these three mass brands get right), but its composition and flavor hews much more closely to a classic German style Pilsner. In other words, it has flavor. The Pils is dry and clean tasting with just a touch of graham-cracker-like malt, spicy hop notes, and a crisp, bitter finish. Prima Pils is a pleasant reminder of why light lagers are the most popular beer in the world (and also a painful reminder of how few breweries aim to make them interesting). Fortunately, Victory distributes in 29 states. [victorybeer.com]
Sly Fox Pikeland Pils, Pennsylvania
A canned beer should be one that you want to string along beside the canoe and then crack open on a 95-degree day – which is why the aluminum-sheathed Sly Fox pilsner, a refreshing yet substantial straw-colored, artisanal-quality beer, gets our vote for the best damned can in the land. [beermenus.com]
Sierra Nevada Kellerweis, California, USA
We've heard a lot about this unfiltered, slightly spicy Bavarian-style wheat beer from brewmasters, but Ninkasi's Jaime Floyd summed it up best: "I only had it once on draft, but it was the best American-made Bavarian-style hefe I have ever had." We concur. [$2/bottle; halftimebeverage.com]
Two Brothers Atom Smasher
On October 12th, 1810, Bavaria's Prince Ludwig was married to Therese of Saxe-Hildberghausen and the citizens of Munich were invited to celebrate the occasion at a massive festival on the fields in front of the city gates. This being Germany, beer was served. The event was such a hit that it has been repeated annually ever since, with only the occasional break due to cholera epidemics and war. Both the festival and the beers that were served there became known as Oktoberfest, and we can all thank Ludwig and Therese for the complex (yet easy-drinking) lager and the great parties.
The Oktoberfest beers are smooth quaffers with a nuanced malt backbone. Only Munich-based breweries are allowed to sell their beers at the official festival, but the style has spread globally. Two Brothers Brewing Company, located outside of Chicago, brews one of our favorite American examples. Its Atom Smasher respects the traditional Oktoberfest flavor profile, but also puts a unique spin on the concept.
Atom Smasher pours a pale copper with a light tan head and it has a delicate bready aroma. At 7 percent alcohol, it's a stronger beer than most German examples, but if you didn't read the label you'd never know it. It drinks dangerously easily and has a beguilingly subtle malt character with a gentle toastiness. The beer is lagered, or aged cold, in oak foudres – large upright wooden barrels that are more commonly found in wineries than in breweries. The foudres soften the flavors a bit while adding a trace amount of vanilla flavor. This isn't a flavor that we normally associate with an Oktoberfest beer, but like the higher alcohol, it's not at all unwelcome.
Atom Smasher is packaged in bottles adorned with an illustration of the oak foudres that they're aged in – a nice touch. Unfortunately, there's a catch: Two Brothers have limited space in those foudres. Consequently, Atom Smasher is a limited release beer. Drink it while you have the chance because we're buying it whenever we see it. [twobrosbrew.com]
Widmer Okto Festival Ale
This beer was Portland-based Widmer Brewery's first-ever seasonal, released in 1986 as a tribute to traditional German Märzenbier, the common Oktoberfest lagers that were once brewed in March and fermented until fall celebrations. The Okto deviates in one major respect – it's an ale, not a lager, which means it will be slightly more fruity, less crisp, and it doesn't require as much time to make. The beer looks Märzen-like, with its deep amber color, and it tastes appropriately sweet and malty, with some subtle caramel notes that are delivered without a heavy body or cloying sweetness. There's something earthy and nutty about this beer that reminds us of how autumn smells in a leafy place.
Samuel Adams Octoberfest (Märzen)
The Märzen style of beer that gets served at Munich's Oktoberfest festival is a malty lager with some caramel character and a straightforward clean-tasting appeal. It's a great training-wheels beer style to introduce to friends who think they don't like craft beer, and it's widely available throughout the football season.
The Samuel Adams version differs from the Märzen style with a bit more hop flavor than its more traditional German cousins, but not so much as to muddle up the impression of a malt-forward lager. It's a good example of the style, but the real reason we reach for it so often at this time of year is that it's so much more likely to be fresh than the Munich versions (such as Hofbräu and Spaten), which are fantastic, but have to contend with the double whammy of potential cardboard flavors developing with age as they cross the ocean, not to mention skunking from light that seeps through the green bottles. Samuel Adams Octoberfest is less likely to be skunked in its brown bottle, and if you opt for cans instead of bottles, you know for sure there's no way that the beer inside will be light-struck.
Captain Lawrence Captain's Kolsch
We can't think of a better way to hang on to the fading glory of summertime than with a Kolsch. We've long been champions of this light underappreciated type of ale that masquerades as a lager. The style originated in Cologne, Germany, but American craft brewers – like Captain Lawrence Brewing Company (out of Westchester, New York) – are taking some liberties with the classic brew. The Captain's Kolsch, one of the most popular beers from the company, is one example that shows the power of American hops while letting the best, easy-drinking aspects of the classic brew alone.
The aroma and flavor here is a study in subtlety and balance. Light graham cracker malt flavors are held in check by snappy hop spice notes. Thanks to a modest addition of Crystal hops (an American hop primarily grown in the Pacific Northwest), there is a touch more bite here than in a traditional German example – as well as a new dimension of spicy, herbal notes, but not so much as to distract from the basic, easy-drinking beer (it has just 5% alcohol). In all, it's refreshingly clean with slight hints of the fruity zing that great ale yeasts impart.
Like the rest of the Captain Lawrence beers, bottles of the Captain's Kolsch are emblazoned with the image of a beer barrel engulfed in flames and bearing the brewery's initials. Likewise, Captain Lawrence respects old world traditions without being shy about offering an exciting American take on the style. Still, we suggest you drink this one in the original glass, served in eights in a traditional kranz. [captainlawrencebrewing.com]
Gordon Biersch Weizen Eisbock
In the mid-nineties, the largest breweries in America were tripping over themselves to introduce Eisbock ("Ice Beers"), a 100-plus-year-old German tradition, to beer drinkers. The idea is simple. Since alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water, breweries can store and filter the beer at sub freezing levels, taking out ice crystals and leaving rich, malty, higher alcohol brew. The result, in the pre-craft era, you might remember, was a slew of beers like Molson "Ice" – flavorless headaches in a can.
Today, Gordon Biersch brewmaster Dan Gordon is showing us what Americans were missing back then. Gordon, the only American to ever graduate from the Brewing Institute of Munich at Weihenstephan, has built his brewery's identity around pitch-perfect executions of classic German beer styles that rigidly adhere to the Reinheitsgebot, Germany's Beer Purity Law of 1516.
With its Braumeister Selekt Weizen Eisbock, Gordon Biersch starts off with a strong, dark, and malty wheat bock that's bursting with caramel, raisin, and banana notes. The "eising" process not only concentrates the alcohol (10 percent), but also the flavor. The result is a hugely full-bodied wheat beer that is silky and dry on the palette, and dangerously easy to drink.
The Weizen Eisebock is a limited release and is available in just 11 states, so snap it up while you can. [gordonbiersch.com]
Coney Island Human Blockhead Imperial American Bock
A traditional dobbelbock is a strong malty German-style lager made from only barley, hops, and water. In fact, since 1516 Duke Wilhelm IV's Beer Purity Law of 1516 those were the only ingredients allowed in any German beer (they didn't realize that they were also using yeast until Louis Pasteur discovered its role in 1857). Shmaltz Brewing Company, out of Brooklyn, New York, cheerfully treads all over this tradition by aging a supercharged doppelbock in a bourbon barrel.
Like most doppelbocks, Human Blockhead is a deep, powerful malt bomb. There are caramel and raisin notes with just enough underlying bitterness to maintain a steady balance. That's where German tradition ends and American inspiration begins. The beer clocks in at a hefty 10 percent alcohol – huge even by doppelbock standards. The barrel aging softens the flavor, though, and lends a vanilla note, but the bigger contribution comes from the bourbon that was the barrel's prior resident. It integrates nicely, and while there's some warmth from the alcohol there's none of the whiskey burn that can haunt beers of this style.
While a beer this unencumbered by tradition might inspire an imitation of the sideshow performer on the label (who, true to the Coney Island Show, is driving a nail into his face), we recommend a more measured approach. Split a 22-ounce bomber bottle with a friend and enjoy it with some proscuitto, gruyere cheese, and a nice hunk of bread. [shmaltzbrewing.com]
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