Oktoberfest

In honour of Oktoberfest one of my locals (The Vintage Bar) had a German style beer & food tasting evening which I thought would be interesting to go along to. We got told about the history of German brewing and about each of the four German style beers we got to taste (taste as in a half pint of each).

The first was "Hacker-Pschorr , Munich Gold" which was a very typical Munich Pilsner, a clean crisp lager without much to make it stand out from any other quality Pilsner.

The second was "Thornbridge, Tzara" a Kölsch style beer, essentially another "Pilsner style" but supposedly brewed around Cologne (although this one was brewed by Thornbridge in Englandshire) but contains some Wheat Malt as well as Barley Malt, giving it a slightly lighter fruitier flavour.

The third beer we tried was "Maisel's Weisse Original" which is a Hefeweizen from Germany, essentially a classic German wheat beer, very sweet and fruity with hints of either banana or bubble gum, depending on your taste buds!

The final beer, my favourite, and pictured above was "Dogtoberfest Märzen" an American Märzen style beer from Flying Dog Brewery! This is was a much darker much hoppier beer than the others and to my tastes had a strong flavour of toffee to it, which complemented a delicious little slice of Black Forest Gateaux :-)

We also got a small taster of German sausages with sauerkraut, German wholegrain mustard and rye bread served with the first beer, which was also delicious. All in all an enjoyable evening although it did not really persuade me to convert to German beer :-)