Oktoberfest Taste Off - Round 1

I am not entirely sure I thought this one through.

Sitting watching the idiot box with a glass of Von Trapp Oktoberfest in my hand, I decided it would be a fun idea to get my grubby mitts on every Oktoberfest I could in the Charlottesville area and try to decide which was the best one.

I ended up with 18 beers, it would have been 19 but Beer Run have been out of Von Trapp Oktoberfest ever since the notion popped into my head. The 18 were:

• Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest
• Port City Oktoberfest
• Ayinger Oktober Fest-Märzen
• Great Lakes Oktoberfest
• Devils Backbone O'Fest
• Blue Mountain 13.Five Oktoberfest
• Goose Island Oktoberfest
• Schlafly Oktoberfest
• Paulaner Oktoberfest Märzen
• Paulander Oktoberfest Wiesn
• Hofbräu Oktoberfestbier
• Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest
• Weihenstephaner Festbier
• Benediktiner Festbier
• Brothers Craft Festbier
• Samuel Adams Octoberfest
• Brooklyn Oktoberfest
• Legend Oktoberfest

To whittle this down to 16 beers for a knock out style first round, I gave the beers each a number and had Mrs V give me 4 numbers at random for a pair of qualifying ties, which ended up being:

• Great Lakes Oktoberfest vs Schlafly Oktoberfest
• Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest vs Brothers Craft Festbier

Rather than taking notes for the qualifying round, I drank each beer blind and made my decision as a pure beauty contest, figuring that I would pay more attention to the beers themselves in the competition proper. Thus Sierra Nevada and Schlafly made it through. Despite Great Lakes and Brothers Craft being sent home early, both were perfectly decent beers, though Great Lakes was sweetener than I like for a lager beer. With capricious whimsy completing the first round, we made the draw:

• Ayinger vs Blue Mountain Brewery
• Benediktiner vs Port City Brewing
• Hacker-Pschorr vs Devils Backbone Brewing
• Hofbräu vs Brooklyn Brewery
• Paulaner Märzen vs Legend Brewing
• Paulaner Wiesn vs Goose Island
• Weihenstephan vs Samuel Adams
• Sierra Nevada vs Schlafly

To keep this as blind as possible, the inestimable Mrs V randomly picked the ties to pour and didn't tell me which beer was which for each pair. I did take some notes for round 1 but outcomes were heavily influenced by which beer I preferred, so rather than bore you to death with my tasting notes (and honestly how many times do you want to read "malty"?), here are the pictures, with the victorious beer in bold.

Hofbräu vs Brooklyn Brewery

Weihenstephaner vs Samuel Adams

Paulaner Wiesn vs Goose Island

Paulaner Märzen vs Legend

Benediktiner vs Port City

Hacker-Pschorr vs Devils Backbone

Ayinger vs Blue Mountain

Schlafly vs Sierra Nevada

A couple of takeaways from these results. I was really surprised that Samuel Adams made it past the first round as normally I find it way too sweet for my tastes. There were some seriously difficult decisions here, had I been doing this with friends fisticuffs may have ensued, it was that close, in particular the Ayinger vs Blue Mountain and Schlafly vs Sierra Nevada ties.

This weekend I will do the quarter and semi finals, having bought extra bottles of any of the beers that I need. Tempted to run a poll on what people think will win...