Commentist Beer Barrel: Alternatives

This year’s Oktoberfest opened in Bavaria just about two weeks ago. Most of Oktoberfest every year takes place in September, just like you’d expect, and it coincides nicely with the start of fall in most parts of the Northern Hemisphere that aren’t the burning hellscape of Central Texas. Here, daily highs have only just dropped into the low 80s, and they may not stay there for long, either. For the moment, though, it’s 79 degrees out, it’s sunny, it’s breezy, and it finally feels as though the weather has caught up with the fresh wave of seasonal beers that hit local shelves way back at the end of July. Every year, a solid majority of those beers fall into one of two categories: Märzen or Oktoberfest beers, and pumpkin beers. This space has featured at least a couple of pumpkin beers already, and while we are smack in the middle of the actual Oktoberfest festival days, it’s honestly not one of my favorite styles. I’d like to suggest instead an alternative to the Märzen, something with a little more meat on its bones. Specifically, an Altbier.

Altbier began as a local specialty of Dusseldorf, Germany, and since then has carried on a running geographically-based rivalry with the Kölsch beers of the fairly nearby Cologne. I’m not clear on exactly why this rivalry exists; Altbier and Kölsch are different as night and… I guess early morning? They’re not exact opposites, but they’re very different. Kölsch is bright, clear, crisp and bready; Altbier is dark amber or brown, rich, and bittersweet. There’s clearly room for someone to like both, or for someone from Dusseldorf to like Kölsch, or the other way round, based entirely on taste preference rather than geographical allegiance. But this got me thinking: Aren’t our football teams kind of like this too? We like them, often, because we grew up in a place where they were popular. And we stick with them even when we find them downright unpalatable. Maybe we’d be happier if we dispensed with these silly provincial loyalties and just pulled for the teams that we find the most enjoyable to watch. Is a Browns fan’s life really enriched by being shackled to a bunch of perpetual losers, or does it just add another grievous insult to the injury of having been born in Cleveland in the first place?

Then again: If this were the right way to watch football, wouldn’t we all have been Patriots fans in 2007? The hell with that. Because fuck Boston, and fuck the Patriots.

Hops & Grain Alt-eration is an award-winner, a gold medalist in its style at the 2012 World Beer Cup, which seems to me at least like a hell of a trick from an American altbier out of a brewery in its first year of operation. The beer pours a deep copper brown with a head that… oops, sorry, it’s gone now. There’s no head. Sorry. Anyway. From the first time you smell this, you know the hops are going to be significant factor; on the nose they’re grassy with maybe the barest touch of citrus. Taste it, and the hops recede to a sort of indistinct bitterness, and that’s honestly perfect! Altbier lives and dies on the quality of its malted barley, not on the IBUs. The hops are for bittering, for keeping the natural sweetness of malted barley in check. But damned if that malt doesn’t fill its boundaries and then some. There’s baker’s chocolate at the base, a bit of candied apple, some apricot, and overall just the impression of being in a top-flight bakery. I’m not BJCP-certified. I’ve had some traditional German altbiers but I don’t know what makes an altbier traditional. In any case, this beer is sweet on first impression but dry on the finish, full-bodied without overwhelming the palate, and really utterly distinctive in flavor. It’s an amber-colored ale that doesn’t taste like a boring-ass amber ale, a notably bitter beer that’s not all about the hops, a round, full, malty beer that’s still somehow crisp. It tastes like autumn ought to.

lady snow says: I don’t know if it’s the right word, but I think of “roasty.” Maybe like roasted nuts.

make it snow says: Oh, yeah, I get that. It’s got some walnut or almond to it. And the bitter finish supplies the “roasted” quality.

lady snow says: I’m associating it with the meaty roastiness, too, of a Great Divide Hibernation.

make it snow says: It’s on that spectrum, I think. There’s a certain sort of ineffable flavor that I’ve come to associate with really autumn-appropriate beers, and its present in varying degrees here, and in Hibernation, and in [candidate for next week’s review redacted].

lady snow says: It reminds me of being out on my grandparents’ farm, smelling the hay in the barn, and the clean crisp air, and feeling a nice warm sweater around me. Let me tell you why I think it’s called Alt-eration.

make it snow says: Please.

lady snow says: It tastes like the transition between seasons. It tastes like the way our bodies feel, in a synaesthetic sense, when we experience those transitions. I know it’s a year-round beer for Hops & Grain, but I believe it’s a beer you can drink at any time of year and feel the promise of future autumns.

tl;dr: A satisfying fall beer that, at just over 5% abv, won’t make you fall over.

Grade: There’s a season for everything, except buttchugging this beer.

make it snow is an alot of beer and fall enjoyer who apologizes for the recent gap in DFO’s important beer coverage. Let’s make it Halloween all year long.