Festbier is a style built around a Munich autumn. Zilker Brewing Company brews its version for a Texas one, and the brewery is direct about what that changes.
Wunderbier is back and has been rolling out to shelves across Austin all week. It is a festbier lager at 5.5 percent, and Zilker's own shorthand for it on the brewery site is a lighter, modern twist on an Oktoberfest classic.
The reasoning comes straight from the newsletter:
It's still hot here in Texas, so we like our festbier light, dry, and easy drinking, with just a touch of malt complexity to keep things interesting.
That is a smaller adjustment than it sounds, and a harder one than it looks. Festbier already sits on the lighter side of the Oktoberfest family, so there is not much room left to trim before the beer stops reading as a seasonal at all. The malt has to stay, because the toast is the whole point of the style. What goes is the impression of sweetness that comes with it.
Zilker's tasting notes describe how the beer is meant to land. The brewery calls it clean and crispy up front, with rich toasty malt, a burst of flavor and a tame sweetness, balanced by a low herbal hop bitterness that lingers into a dry, clean finish.
The herbal bitterness is worth noting, because in a beer this pared back it is carrying real weight. A festbier that keeps its malt sweetness usually relies on that sweetness to round the finish. Take it away and something has to close the beer out instead. Here the brewery has handed that job to the hops.
Wunderbier is on shelves around Austin now, and the newsletter links a full list of stockists. The taproom is at 1701 E 6th Street.
Source & Editorial
JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.