Beer Brawl™ 26 – Oktoberfest Part 1 – Blind Tasting
Our first ever blind Beer Brawl. We decided to test as many Oktoberfest beers as we could easily get our hands on without going over board. We ended up with 12 that we wanted to try and decided it would be fun to see what Fest beer we truly liked the best without any influence from the brand name. Since there were 12 beers we decide to split it up into two batches. We knew what was in each 6 block trial, but we didn’t know the order they would be served and the results we quite stunning!
With me on this podcast was Kevin Malavarca from the Liquor Outlet in Boonton NJ and Jay Phillips from Samuel Adams. The only prerequisite I have for the Beer Brawl™ is a love of beer. You don’t need to know anything about the beers we are drinking only a willingness to try them and voice an opinion.
Peter, Kevin, Jay (Left-Right)
As usual we have a podcast of The Beer Brawl™ ready for download:
Listen to the Podcast (34:08)
or download from iTunes
On Tap:
- Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest
- Paulaner Oktoberfest
- Spaten Oktoberfest
- Brooklyn Oktoberfest
- Samuel Adams Oktoberfest
- Flying Dog Dogtoberfest
the setup
You got to listen to this podcast. We found pretty quickly we thought we knew more then we did about these beers. We were shocked to find out none of us could guess any of these beers and the ones we liked the best not the ones we thought…
Download the podcast and listen to all the details about how these Oktoberfest Beers stacked up against each other. But if you don’t have time to listen, here are how we rated them:
| PETER | KEVIN | JAY | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spaten Oktoberfest | 84 | 88 | 85 |
| Brooklyn Oktoberfest | 86 | 87 | 87 |
| Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest | 89 | 90 | 92 |
| Samuel Adams Oktoberfest | 87 | 91 | 89 |
| Flying Dog Dogtoberfest | 90 | 88 | 90 |
| Paulaner Oktoberfest | 79 | 85 | 81 |
Next week will be Oktoberfest beer part 2 of our first ever blind tasting! I’m working on future Beer Brawls™, we have Belgian Quads, and Trappist Ales Beer Brawls™ coming up. We’d love to hear your suggestions!
Blind tastings are always fun. It’s funny how the label on a beer can affect the flavor, but it’s a very real phenomenon. I’m a little shocked that Sam Adams did so well, but their Oktoberfest is one of their better beers. Can’t wait to see what happens in round 2.
@jim – it was really cool. Part two was really fun. little less traditional oktoberfest, including two ales! I was shocked with Paulaner, but at the same time having two American beers (Sam’s and Flying Dog) inline with Hacker-Pschorr was pretty cool. I just started editing Round 2; trying for Thursday, but it may be next Monday.
I haven’t had all of those but Spaten and Sam Adams Oktoberfests are probably my favorites.
@mike, and round 2 has 6 more!
Very cool! I’m finding that I like some of the domestic Oktoberfests better than the German ones! This year I’ve had the Flying Fish Oktoberfish (an ale) and Left Hand’s Oktoberfest, both were better than the Germans I thought! Looking forward to round 2 as well!
@scott, almost done with round 2, have about 15 minutes to edit. Hopefully tonight or sunday it’ll be up.