Festy Spends Weeks at Freezing in Horizontal Lagering Tanks

Sacred Vice Brewing opened its newsletter by questioning its own timing. Should Oktoberfest beers, and pumpkin beers while we are at it, still count as fall beers? And if you are the sort of drinker who will not touch one until Labor Day has passed, would you consider an exception?

The beer prompting all that is Festy, the Philadelphia brewery's seasonal lager, back on at the Berks Street Taproom starting today. Labor Day is still more than a week out.

Festy is rooted in the German Oktoberfest tradition, and the malt bill is where that shows. Sacred Vice uses both dark and light Munich malts, which supply the color and what the brewery calls the heft of malt character while keeping the beer light and, in its words, deceptively drinkable. The brewery lists it at 5.4 percent.

The process detail is the part worth slowing down for. Festy is fermented cold and slow, then aged for weeks on end at freezing temperatures in horizontal lagering tanks. That last phrase is doing real work. Most breweries now lager in the same tall cylindroconical vessels they ferment in, because vertical tanks are cheaper on floor space. A horizontal tank holds the beer in a much shallower column, which puts less pressure on the yeast and conditions the beer more gently. It is the traditional configuration, and it is a deliberate choice to still own them.

Sacred Vice describes the beer as brewed to be enjoyed in abundance, through the change of the seasons, and proposes that as a style category in its own right. That is the Oktoberfest brief stated plainly enough: these are beers designed around the second one.

Festy is pouring at the Berks Street Taproom at 120 W. Berks St. The brewery's Amber Street address opens only for special events, so this is the room to aim for.