Name: Fest Bier
Brand: Haymarket Brewing Company
Availability: InStock

As Munich uses the word today, Festbier means a pale gold lager. Haymarket Brewing Company files its Fest Bier somewhere else.

The Chicago brewery's beer list puts it under malty and roasty, and labels it a Marzen at 5.7 percent. That is the older Oktoberfest style. It runs amber rather than gold, and it leans on toffee and bread crust where the modern Festbier stays dry and pale. The photograph Haymarket sent with the announcement agrees. The pour is deep copper under a tall white head.

Haymarket describes the beer as malty on the nose, with toffee and earthy hops on the palate. The brewery puts the seasonal turn plainly.

It's that beautiful time of year when our tastebuds shift from bright and citrusy to dark and biscuity.

Biscuity is Marzen vocabulary, and so is toffee. The tasting note and the classification are pointing at the same beer. The earthy hops belong to the same tradition. German festival lagers are built on noble varieties that sit back and let the malt do the talking, which is the opposite of how most American seasonal beers are put together.

Fest Bier is on draft and in cans to go at both Haymarket locations, the brewpub on West Randolph Street in Chicago and the taproom in Bridgman, Michigan. Around Illinois it is on shelves at retailers including Binny's. There is no Michigan distribution at all, so the Bridgman taproom is the only place in that state to pick up cans.

The beer travels a little this month as well. Haymarket is pouring it at the Elmhurst Craft Beer Fest on September 19, alongside Chicago Tavern Beer and Relief Peacher IPA.

Editor’s Take

Somewhere there is a patient committee that has ruled Festbier and Marzen are two different things, and somewhere else there is every American brewery in September, cheerfully declining to check. Haymarket has found a third way. Call it Fest Bier on the can, file it as a Marzen on the beer list, and let the drinker work it out over the second pint. I find this enormously sensible. The Marzen is the amber one, the one with toffee and a bit of bread crust, and it is still what most people picture when they picture Oktoberfest, even though the tents in Munich moved on from it decades ago.

The detail I keep returning to is the Michigan arrangement. Haymarket has a taproom in Bridgman and no distribution in the state around it, which means that in the whole of Michigan there is precisely one place to buy this beer and you have to drive to it. There is something wonderfully unhurried about that. No shelf space to fight for, no listing to negotiate, no cold box in a gas station somewhere doing the beer no favors. Just a room, and the beer, and the fairly strong implication that you should come and sit in it.

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.

Fest Bier Carries the Festbier Name and the Marzen Color

Haymarket's Oktoberfest beer is back at 5.7 percent. The name says Festbier, the brewery's own beer list says Marzen, and the pour in their photograph settles the question in favor of amber.

Source & Editorial