The real Oktoberfest ended earlier this week, but we North Americans tend to take the whole month to celebrate.

This 600ml bottle pours a clear, bright medium copper amber colour, with four zaftig fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly tan head, which leaves some dispersing smoke screen lace around the glass as it slowly but surely sinks away.

It smells of bready and biscuity caramel malt, a further toasted graininess, mild bar-top nutty notes, and some plain leafy, weedy, and dried hay-like hop bitterness.  The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, wet breakfast cereals, a bit of free-range ashiness, some faint earthy spice, and more herbal, leafy, and dead grassy ‘verdant’ hoppiness.  The carbonation is average in its basic form frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with maybe a few toast crumbs getting in the way of the sublime here.  It finishes off-dry, the complex malt keeping control of the wheel with style and aplomb.

Overall – this comes across as a very capably-rendered Oktoberfest lager, with lots of malt structure and just enough hops and alcohol awareness to maintain a healthy balance.  Worth checking out, and probably a great match for all your upcoming seasonal fowl-based noshing.