Great Lakes Brewery Märzen (5.6%)

Before I get to Oktoberfest beer number fourteen, a bit about the just-concluded Oktoberfest in Munich. Other than being there, one of the things I love best about Oktoberfest is the statistical recap the organization releases after the festival’s final day, which in 2024 was this past Sunday. While it used to be a bit more, um, ‘colourful’ than it has been in recent years – I recall stats on the number of dentures and other items of an even more personal nature handed in at the lost property office – there is still plenty to intrigue and amuse.

On the more formal side of the stats, oktoberfest.de revealed that this year saw 6.7 million revellers attend the event, down from last year’s 7.2 million – likely due to some inclement weather the second week – but well up from 2022’s 5.7 million. Beer sales were also down from 2023 at 7 million litres, but only slightly and higher on a per capita basis, and visitors consumed about 9% more food than was eaten in ’23.

The attempted theft stats were also down, with almost 100,000 people stopped while trying to make off with their Maßkrug, lower than both 2023’s 115,600 and 2022’s shamefully high 137,790.

As suggested by the note about dentures above, some of my favourite stats concern items turned into the lost property office, which this year numbered approximately 3,500. Included in that total were: 700 wallets; 315 mobile phones; 300 pairs of glasses or sunglasses; five wedding rings – only three of which were reclaimed! – a pair of handcuffs; and a dental crunch splint, whatever that is.

Recap done, on to today’s beer.

Definitely the darkest of the Oktoberfest beers tasted thus far, this GLB seasonal is a bright amber colour with a lovely and enduring collar of beige foam. First impression of the aroma is all caramelly malt, but it doesn’t take long to deduce that there is something else going on, as well. On second sniff, the malt grows less overtly sweet and a bit more earthy. On the third, a spicy hop note appears in the background, a little peppery and a bit allspice-ish, suggesting that perhaps a higher-then-normal hopping is a big part of the “North American, GLB signature” the brewery says it put on the beer.

Similarly, the palate entry is all about the malt, more toffee-ish than caramel, with hints of orange zest and an underlying herbal character. On the mid-palate, hops show up to play, adding a bitterness that is first citrusy, then more grassy, taking the beer down a road that is neither Old nor New School Oktoberfest, but perhaps just Great Lakes School. And although the online specs for this beer – checked only after tasting, of course – show it to be rated at a very modest 11 International Bitterness Units, or IBUs, the finish has a bracing, leafy, and vaguely grapefruity bitterness that certainly recalls that earlier mention of a North American signature.

Of all the fourteen Oktoberfest beers sampled so far this season, this is without question the most unusual, to the point that, if poured at Munich’s Oktoberfest last week, it would have drinkers wondering what the hell they just been swerved. For all its lack of stylistic convention, however, it’s a clean, crisp, quaffable, and thoroughly enjoyable Märzen, deserving of not just one, but two scores.

72 as an Oktoberfest beer/87 as a GLB beer (Sold out at the brewery)