Bring Your Own Stein and Parktoberfest Costs Two Dollars Less

Festbier is designed to be drunk by the liter. At North Park Beer Co. this month, that is not a figure of speech.

Parktoberfest is a German-style festbier at 5.5 percent ABV, and it is the one can in the San Diego brewery's four-beer release week that cannot be shipped. It is available for taproom pickup only. The beer shares its name with the brewery's Parktoberfest celebration, which returns to the North Park taproom on Saturday, September 19 with a stein-holding competition starting at 2pm sharp, gift cards for the top two finishers, and food specials running through October 4.

Through that same stretch, the North Park taproom is pouring Parktoberfest in one-liter steins for $14. Anyone who turns up with their own North Park stein pays $12, at any of the three locations.

Built to noble-hop specification

The recipe is traditional. North Park describes a golden copper hue and a rich, toasty malt profile, hopped with Hallertau Mittelfruh and Tettnanger.

Those two are not decorative choices. Both are classic German noble varieties, low in bitterness and valued almost entirely for aroma, which is what a festbier needs. The style has very little to hide behind. There is no hop intensity to carry it and no residual sweetness to smooth it over, so the malt has to be clean and the hop character has to stay in the background providing a herbal, faintly spicy lift. The brewery's own description puts it as a festively zesty noble hop profile set against a clean, crisp finish.

That restraint is the whole point of the style rather than a limitation of it. A beer meant to be drunk in liter measures over an afternoon has to stay drinkable at the bottom of the glass, which rules out most of what a brewery would otherwise reach for to make a beer memorable in its first sip.

Parktoberfest is available now for pickup at North Park's San Diego taprooms. It is the only one of this week's four cans that will not travel.