Four Peaks Oktoberfest Coming 9/13 & Pumpkin Porter 9/23

So…who wants a brand, spanking new Four Peaks Seasonal offering this Friday, Sept. 13th?

Sorry, it’s not the Pumpkin Porter (that will be on September 23rd if anyone’s interested), but the brand new Four Peaks Oktoberfest, a Vienna Lager!

According to our esteemed Four Peaks scholars…

This year Four Peaks Brewing will be the Title Sponsor of the Tempe Oktoberfest and, in honor of the event, we will be brewing a special Oktoberfest Beer, the Vienna Lager.

We know what you’re thinking; Vienna is in Austria and Oktoberfest is a purely Bavarian event, what gives?

Well, we could go way back and explain that Vienna lager was first produced by Anton Dreher in 1841 at his Viennese brewery.  But, Anton was actually trained how to make beer by Bavarian brewers.  In fact, he took many of their brewing techniques back to Vienna in hopes of re-producing what at the time was Bavaria’s, and specifically Munich’s, favorite beer; Maerzen.  Which, we could also explain was probably the first style of beer that was served at the early Oktoberfests of Anton’s time.  In fact, Oktoberfestbier, a stronger version of Maerzen, is the only beer allowed in Oktoberfest today and must be brewed by one of the breweries within the city of Munich.  All of this lead us to think; hey, we’re not in the city of Munich (we’re smart like that) and if they won’t let us in with an Oktoberfest bier then we’ll do what Anton did; we’ll stay out and brew a Vienna Lager.  That’s right, and if the Oktoberfest bier polizei want to come calling we say let ’em.  We are not afraid…

But, actually, we just like the Vienna style better than the Maerzen style. 

It is paler in color than its more robust cousin with a light, toasty, more delicate malt background.  It tends to be less sweet with a more assertive hop character.  That is not to say that Vienna Lager is a hoppy beer, it’s not, but it is a balanced beer.  And if you know us at all you know we LOVE balanced beer.  It’s also slightly less alcoholic than Maerzen coming in at around 5.5%.