It’s our annual round-up of those fall favorites, Oktoberfest-style lagers, picked from a vast selection available at this time of year. We taste them and rate them with an educated palate from our experts, and a consumer palate from The Brit and The Yankee.

Ex co-host, and beer consultant to the stars, Mark Naski, was back in town last week and he brought us offerings from Boise, Idaho where he now resides. Sone of these brews were Oktoberfest styles, so we thought we’d put them up against a couple from Illinois, plus a few others randomly sampled from across the USA. To help us in this task, we headed over to Dry City Brew Works in Wheaton, and met up with brewer/tap manager Oliver Bulley, who provided their fall offering, ‘Oktonaught’, which is the only ale, slipped into the group of lagers.

We chatted to Oliver about how DCBW has changed since we were last there in November of 2014, and what has changed to ensure that this small nano-brewery is now well worth a visit. We intersperse our conversation by cracking open a variety of brews, and arbitrarily passing judgement on each, finally picking the ones we liked the best.  We talk about what Oktoberfest is all about and how melanoidins figure into their style characteristics, libraries, BBQing, and lots of other topics, all with good beer! Also, a guest appearance from Mike McCandless who is the other half of the brewing duo, and had to run the tap while Oliver made his audio appearance.

Brews Reviewed:
Dry City, Oktonaught, Autumn Ale, 6.1% ABV

All of the following are Marzen-style lagers:

Church Street, Itasca IL, Itascafest, 5.1% ABV
Bells,  Comstock MI, Octoberfest, 5.5% ABV
Odell Brewing, Fort Collins CO, Oktoberfest, 6.1% ABV
Sierra Nevada, Chico CA, 2018 Oktoberfest, collaboration with Weihenstephan, 6.0% ABV
Payette Brewing, Boise ID, Oktoberfest, 5.9% ABV
Edge Brewing, Boise ID, Oktoberfest, 5.6% ABV
Ram Brewing, Boise ID, Oktoberfest, 5.8% ABV

Play the show from the Podbean player, or our player below…