Beer of the Weekend #91: Ayinger Oktober Fest-Märzen
Will the Dodgers ever clinch the NL West, or will they let the Rockies sweep them this weekend and settle for the Wild Card? We’ll find out this weekend.
The beer this weekend is Ayinger Oktober Fest-Märzen brewed by the Brauerei Aying of Aying, Germany.
Yep, BevMo! had it in stock. It was hidden among the other Ayinger brews; it’s hard to tell them apart unless you look closely at the labels. (OF-Mä, though, has a very unique cap design with a stereotypical Bavarian scene, which I didn’t notice until I took the bottles off the shelf.)
Me gloating about my slowly ballooning personal library: on Sunday I bought another beer book at Skylight: Tasting Beer: An Insider’s Guide to the World’s Greatest Drink by Randy Mosher.
It’s an incredible work that covers just about every aspect of beer. Filled with quality graphics, it outlines the history of beer, variety of ingredients, sensory experiences, flavors, proper presentation, methods of evaluation, and the different styles. It should be a great help, and I’m sure I’ll eventually read it cover to cover (it’s not the kind of book I read all the way through; it’s more a reference book than anything else).
On to the beer.
Serving type: Six 16.9-ounce (half liter) bottles.
Appearance: Poured a clean, clear light amber with minor carbonation. Two fingers of thick, off-white head developed and dissipated slowly to leave a thin layer of lacing.
Smell: Very faint aroma; it’s almost hard to pick out. What I could distinguish was buttery caramel malts.
Taste: Follows the smell, but the flavor is more inline with the style. The caramel malts are much more pronounced, and there is a grassy hop bite. It has a great, buttered bread mouthfeel
Drinkability: Frankly, it starts a little off, but turns into a solid Märzen. Very drinkable.
Fun facts about OF-Mä:
-Price: $3.29/bottle.
-Serving temperature: 48°F.
-Alcohol content: 5.8 percent ABV.
-Food pairings: For Märzen’s, Tasting Beer recommends “Mexican cuisine and other spicy foods; chicken, sausage, milder cheeses.” OF-Mä is one of the Märzens Mosher suggests readers try.
-As I said last week, Märzens should be drunk from seidels, but pint glasses are acceptable. This week, though, I can’t pour all the beer in the glass so I’m leaving a little in the bottle to be poured in when I make room. That’s cool, too. I haven’t read anything (yet) that says it’s a bad thing. I could use my weizen glass, but that’s just not right.
-Here’s an interesting fact about Oktoberfest I didn’t know (from MJ’s Great Beer Guide): no brewer outside of the Munich city limits is allowed to serve beer at the festival.
-This should be more than obvious: at some point I want to attend the real Oktoberfest in Munich. I also want to go to a domestic version of the festival. Next fall I’ll be back in the heartland and plan to attend the Oktoberfest in Amana (“A little bit of Bavaria in Iowa”). There’s an Oktoberfest in Huntington Beach at Old World Village, which was apparently designed by a German developer to be a German style village in the middle of Orange County. I’ve never been there, and don’t plan on visiting. Zee German told me it was shit. Plus, it’s a popular hang out for Nazis. I’m not joking.
The Quiet Man’s grade: B+.
The beer this weekend is Ayinger Oktober Fest-Märzen brewed by the Brauerei Aying of Aying, Germany.
Yep, BevMo! had it in stock. It was hidden among the other Ayinger brews; it’s hard to tell them apart unless you look closely at the labels. (OF-Mä, though, has a very unique cap design with a stereotypical Bavarian scene, which I didn’t notice until I took the bottles off the shelf.)
Me gloating about my slowly ballooning personal library: on Sunday I bought another beer book at Skylight: Tasting Beer: An Insider’s Guide to the World’s Greatest Drink by Randy Mosher.
It’s an incredible work that covers just about every aspect of beer. Filled with quality graphics, it outlines the history of beer, variety of ingredients, sensory experiences, flavors, proper presentation, methods of evaluation, and the different styles. It should be a great help, and I’m sure I’ll eventually read it cover to cover (it’s not the kind of book I read all the way through; it’s more a reference book than anything else).
On to the beer.
Serving type: Six 16.9-ounce (half liter) bottles.
Appearance: Poured a clean, clear light amber with minor carbonation. Two fingers of thick, off-white head developed and dissipated slowly to leave a thin layer of lacing.
Smell: Very faint aroma; it’s almost hard to pick out. What I could distinguish was buttery caramel malts.
Taste: Follows the smell, but the flavor is more inline with the style. The caramel malts are much more pronounced, and there is a grassy hop bite. It has a great, buttered bread mouthfeel
Drinkability: Frankly, it starts a little off, but turns into a solid Märzen. Very drinkable.
Fun facts about OF-Mä:
-Price: $3.29/bottle.
-Serving temperature: 48°F.
-Alcohol content: 5.8 percent ABV.
-Food pairings: For Märzen’s, Tasting Beer recommends “Mexican cuisine and other spicy foods; chicken, sausage, milder cheeses.” OF-Mä is one of the Märzens Mosher suggests readers try.
-As I said last week, Märzens should be drunk from seidels, but pint glasses are acceptable. This week, though, I can’t pour all the beer in the glass so I’m leaving a little in the bottle to be poured in when I make room. That’s cool, too. I haven’t read anything (yet) that says it’s a bad thing. I could use my weizen glass, but that’s just not right.
-Here’s an interesting fact about Oktoberfest I didn’t know (from MJ’s Great Beer Guide): no brewer outside of the Munich city limits is allowed to serve beer at the festival.
-This should be more than obvious: at some point I want to attend the real Oktoberfest in Munich. I also want to go to a domestic version of the festival. Next fall I’ll be back in the heartland and plan to attend the Oktoberfest in Amana (“A little bit of Bavaria in Iowa”). There’s an Oktoberfest in Huntington Beach at Old World Village, which was apparently designed by a German developer to be a German style village in the middle of Orange County. I’ve never been there, and don’t plan on visiting. Zee German told me it was shit. Plus, it’s a popular hang out for Nazis. I’m not joking.
The Quiet Man’s grade: B+.
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