Oktoberfest Splits the Work: Magnum Bitters, Hallertau Finishes

Twin Lights turns the taps toward fall this week with its returning 5.6 percent Oktoberfest lager, built on a two-hop bill where each hop has exactly one job.

• Style: German-Style Oktoberfest Lager
• Release Date: 2026-09-02
• ABV: 5.6%
• Twin Lights Brewing (Tinton Falls, NJ)

Fall at Twin Lights Brewing arrives the way it usually does, which is to say as a lager.

The Tinton Falls brewery is bringing back its 5.6 percent German-Style Oktoberfest Lager this week, brewed with what it calls German-inspired malts and hopped with Magnum and Hallertau. The brewery describes a beer that pours golden amber, with toasted malt and caramel up front, earthy and lightly spicy notes behind them, and a smooth, velvety finish.

Two hops is a short list by modern standards, and the pairing is a familiar one in German brewing because each variety has a single, separate job. Magnum is a high-alpha German-bred bittering hop valued for what it does not do: it supplies bitterness cleanly and contributes very little flavor or aroma of its own. That leaves the aromatic end of the beer entirely to Hallertau, a noble variety whose signature is exactly the earthy, gently spicy character the brewery is describing.

The result is a beer where the malt does the talking. Toasted malt and caramel are doing most of the work in a 5.6 percent lager, and the hops are there to keep it from tipping into sweetness rather than to compete for attention.

Oktoberfest drops at the taproom this week. It is the first of two fall beers Twin Lights has lined up, with an annual Harvest Ale brewed on locally picked hops still to come.