Beer Church

Yesterday, in addition to being a cheerleader for several friends running the Lakefront Marathon, I attended Beer Church.

It is not the traditional church service so don't get all offended by it. But just an amusing name for an event that will be hosted on the first Sunday of the month at John Hawk's Pub in Milwaukee.

Beer church is being hosted by Kurt Mayes (aka BrewerKurt), one of the brewers at Milwaukee Brewing Co. The goal is to learn about different styles of beers from around the world in an informal and casual setting.

Yesterday's theme was Oktoberfests. Oktobertfest is a 16 day festival held in Munich, Germany each year in Sept/Oct. (You can read the Wikipedia article for more details on the festival). Traditionally, Oktobertfest beers are a marzen style, that has more of a malty flavor with no real hop taste to it.

The beers we tried were two categories, German and American.

For the German beers we had

• Warsteiner Premium Oktoberfest by Warsteiner Brauerei
• Erdinger Oktoberfest Weißbier by Erdinger Weissbräu
• Oktoberfest Märzen by Paulaner Brauerei
• Spaten Oktoberfestbier / Oktoberfest Ur-Märzen by Spaten-Franziskaner-Löwenbräu-Gruppe
• Oktoberfest Märzen by Hacker-Pschorr Bräu

Warsteiner Premium Oktoberfest, Erdinger Oktoberfest Weißbier, Oktoberfest Märzen, Spaten Oktoberfestbier / Oktoberfest Ur-Märzen, Oktoberfest Märzen

My personal favorite from this group was the Warsteiner. It had a nice malty flavor. I did not care for the Erdinger which was more like a wheat version of an Oktoberfest. The Paulaner tasted a bit metallic-y for me. Like there was foil in it.

Next up was the American beers

• Hoptoberfest by Milwaukee Brewing Company
• Oktoberfest by Lakefront Brewery
• Oktoberfest by Sprecher Brewing Company
• Samuel Adams Octoberfest by Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams)
• Oktoberfest by Great Lakes Brewing Company

Hoptoberfest, Oktoberfest, Oktoberfest

 Here my favorite was Hoptoberfest. I like hops and this had a nice hoppy flavor that complimented the sweet malty flavor. The rest of the beers were solid and I would drink all of them again.

 While the inaugural meeting was small, it was still a nice group of people with different beer backgrounds. You don't have to be a beer geek to come out. You just have to not be afraid to try something new and different. Who knows, maybe you will find your new favorite beer