Wirtzenbeckfest Finds a Honey Note in the Bready Malt

The house Oktoberfest has landed amber-orange, with the brewery pointing to bready malt, a honey-like sweetness and herbal hops holding the finish clean. Pouring now in Medina.

• Style: Oktoberfest
• Release Date: 2026-09-15
• ABV: N/A
• Planted Flag Brewing (Medina, OH)

Oktoberfest is one of the few styles where a brewery has almost nowhere to hide. Planted Flag Brewing's version has arrived under the name Wirtzenbeckfest.

The Medina, Ohio, brewery describes it as amber-orange, with rich bready malt character, a touch of honey-like sweetness, and a clean finish balanced by subtle herbal and spicy hops.

Nearly every word of that describes malt, which is how the style works. There is no fruit, no adjunct and no aggressive hop aroma to carry the beer, so the grain has to do the work and a clean fermentation has to leave it exposed. Breweries tend to be specific about Oktoberfest for exactly that reason.

The honey note is the interesting specific. Honey is not listed as an ingredient here, and the brewery is describing a character rather than an addition. Malt kilned into the amber range can read that way on its own, where residual sweetness and the deeper, richer end of the malt profile combine into something that lands close to honey without anything being poured in.

The hops handle the other half. Herbal and spicy is the register the classic German hop varieties work in, and in a beer like this their job is to close it out cleanly rather than to be noticed. The brewery's own word for them is subtle, which is the correct ambition.

The name follows a house pattern. Planted Flag's list runs on personal names - Goody's Brew, Ellis's Handiwork, Ethel's Apple Pie, Barreling Down Sheri Lane - and Wirtzenbeckfest reads like the same convention with a festival suffix attached.

Wirtzenbeckfest is pouring now. The brewery is running Chicken Schnitzel and Waffles as a Sunday special starting September 20 and continuing through October as part of its Oktoberfest stretch.