Every year East End Brewing makes a slight tweak to its Oktoberfest. This year the tweak was the style itself.

The 2026 version is a Festbier rather than a marzen, with the recipe handed to the brewery's brewer, Adam. It runs 5.4 percent.

That swap is a bigger move than it sounds, and it is also the one Munich made first. Marzen is the older, amber, maltier beer - brewed in March, lagered through the summer, poured in autumn. Festbier is what the big Bavarian houses shifted to in the 1970s: paler, lighter in body, built to be drunk by the liter without wearing anyone out. Both are correct answers to the word Oktoberfest. They just point in different directions.

East End describes a pleasant but mild bready sweetness, balanced by a gentle toasty note and a low, noble hop bitterness. The brewery calls it an easy quaffer for the shifting seasons.

At 5.4 percent it is restrained even for the format. Festbier as poured in Munich usually sits nearer six percent, so this one gives up a little strength in exchange for the sessionability the style is supposed to deliver in the first place.

The beer will get a direct comparison soon enough. East End is running its second annual Oktoberfest Week at the Mt. Lebanon taproom from September 23 to 27, with four Oktoberfest styles on tap - three guest pours from Balance Brewing, Burghers Brewing Co. and Late Addition Brewing + Blending, alongside the house version. One of the guest taps is a marzen, which puts the style East End just moved away from on a handle beside the one it moved to.

Cans and draft are available now at both Larimer and Mt. Lebanon.

Editor’s Take

Most breweries treat their Oktoberfest recipe like an heirloom. It gets described as traditional, or authentic, or brewed to a 500-year-old purity law that was actually a pricing regulation about barley. Nobody admits to changing it. East End opens by saying they tweak theirs every single year, which is both more honest and, frankly, more German - the Munich breweries themselves quietly swapped the whole style out from under everyone in the 1970s and simply carried on calling it Oktoberfest.

And the tweak went to Adam. Not to a committee, not to the founder, not to a heritage recipe locked in a drawer. A brewer got handed the annual fall lager and told to have a go. That is a lovely way to run a seasonal, and it means the beer is a record of who was standing at the tank that year rather than a photocopy of the last one.

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.

This Year's Oktoberfest Drops the Marzen for a Festbier

East End tweaks its Oktoberfest every year, and the 2026 tweak is a whole style change. The brewery has gone Festbier instead of marzen, with the recipe handed to brewer Adam and the ABV landing at a modest 5.4 percent.

Source & Editorial