Oktoberfest arrives at Guggman Haus next week, steinholding competition and all. The beer the Indianapolis brewery has released ahead of it is not a Marzen or a Festbier. It is a German pilsner.

Odenwald is 5.1 percent, brewed with traditional German malt and Hallertau Mittelfruh hops, and it is on at both taprooms this week. The brewery describes it as light, crisp and refreshing with classic noble hop character, and suggests it is worthy of a stein on the hillside.

The hillside is not a throwaway line. The Odenwald is a range of low wooded hills in southwestern Germany, spread across Hesse, Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg, and generously supplied with the kind of castle that sits on top of one. The can puts that on the label directly: a painted landscape of green fields climbing a slope, conifers down one edge, and a castle on the summit under an open sky.

The hop is the part worth dwelling on. Hallertau Mittelfruh is one of the four traditional noble varieties, a landrace from the Hallertau region of Bavaria, and for a long stretch of the last century it looked like it might not survive. It is prone to wilt disease and yields poorly next to modern varieties, and German growers replaced a great deal of their acreage through the 1970s and 1980s with hardier, more productive alternatives. It held on largely because brewers of classic German lagers would not accept a substitute for what it does, which is a soft floral and herbal aroma carrying almost no aggression behind it.

That matters more in a pilsner than in nearly any other beer. There is no fruit, no haze, no barrel and no roast to work behind. A German pils is malt, water, yeast and one hop, all of it audible.

Odenwald is pouring now at both Guggman Haus locations, the Gent Avenue haus and the 46th Street taproom, ahead of the brewery's Oktoberfest celebration next week.

Editor’s Take

Every brewery in the northern hemisphere is currently wheeling out something amber and malty with a pretzel somewhere on the label, and I say that with real affection, because I intend to drink most of them. Guggman Haus has used the week before its own Oktoberfest to put out a pilsner instead, which strikes me as the braver move by a comfortable margin. A Marzen has body and caramel sweetness to stand behind. A German pils has nothing whatsoever - water, malt, yeast, one noble hop, and a conspicuous absence of anywhere to put a mistake. Anything slightly amiss announces itself by the second sip, to you and to everyone sitting near you.\n\nAnd do take the brewery at its word about the stein. Guggman Haus is running a steinholding competition as part of next week's festivities, that being the contest in which people hold a full stein at arm's length until the arm files a formal complaint. At 5.1 percent this is a beer built for exactly that sort of afternoon: cold, clean, low enough to keep going, and pointedly not the thing that will be responsible for anyone's early exit.

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.

Odenwald Leans on a Noble Hop That Nearly Died Out

With its own Oktoberfest a week away, Guggman Haus has released a German pilsner rather than a Marzen, built on Hallertau Mittelfruh, a noble hop that German growers came close to abandoning altogether.

Source & Editorial