Beer in Review: Gordon Biersch Festbier

I don’t know what it is about the Gordon Biersch tapping events but I never wake up feeling well the next day. I only drank 4 beers 5 beers and one shot of tequila. The good thing is that I didn’t wake up with a hangover, just a mildly upset stomach. Sammy on the other hand, didn’t fare very well at all; huge hangover, fat headache and she even got sick a few times. It’s good to be married.

Still, you didn’t come to the blog to read about how the spicy, Mexican food from last night came to haunt me this morning. No, you came to read about beer, so here it goes.

Gordon Biersch is one of the few breweries that holds beer tapping events for their beers. I think this is an awesome as it’s a great way to introduce people to your latest offerings. It’s never smart business to be giving away your product but as these events become more popular, friends bring friends and what started out as free beer and free appetizers has quickly evolved into a $27 split between you and your friends. It’s also a great way to boost what would normally be a slow night at the brew pub.

In the San Jose location, the waiters were dressed in lederhosen while the women were dressed in dirdls. I realize that they’re just costumes and not authentic but the waitresses sure do make me not care. They’ve also been hiring the same band to play at all the tappings, which is cool as they lead singer is charasmatic and gets the crowd going.

But what about the beer?

Gordon Biersch’s Festbier is clear and caramel in color with amber highlights and an off-white head. The aroma is clean with subtle Vienna malt sweetness. I am not picking up any fruit esters at all. I am surprised when I do taste the beer and find my mouth dancing in a toasty, grainy malt sweetness that gives way to a moderate hop bitterness. This is a medium bodied beer with medium-high/high level of carbonation.

This is a very enjoyable beer that is easy to drink and flavorful. The inital sweetness is pleasant without being dominating while the bitterness is enough to balance out the malt without being harsh. I would recommend this beer to non-beer drinkers like my wife’s girlfriends.

The one thing I was curious about when coming into this tapping is how the Festbier would be different than the Märzen that GB usually carries year round on tap. According to the BJCP style guidelines, “oktoberfest” and “märzen” are basically interchangeable terms that basically point to two different stages in the beer’s development. “Märzen” originally refers to the month the beer was made, March, whereas “Oktoberfest” refers to the autumn festival in which the beer would be consumed.

So, intead of waiting to get home to Google how the Festbier differs from the Märzen, I decided to go directly to the horse’s mouth. In this instance, that meant talking to San Jose Gordon Biersch brewmaster Dan Satterthwaite. According to Dan, Festbier differs from the Märzen in a couple of key points:

• Festbier is about .5 points higher in ° plato (read as “degrees plato”) than the Märzen. This means it’s a little more alcoholic.
• Festbier uses 5 different specialty malts while the Märzen only uses 3. Dan mentioned that Honey malt is one of the malt but used in a very small percentage.
• Festbier also uses no finishing hops, just bittering hops. While I didn’t inquire as to which hops (stupid me!) he used, the result is a beer with a cleaner aroma.

I was planning on doing a side-by-side comparision of the Festbier to the Märzen but Dan mentioned that the Märzen wasn’t at its freshest so it wouldn’t be a fair comparision. I talked Sammy’s best friend Huong into buying me a Märzen anyway. I found the Märzen to still taste pretty good all around but it wasn’t a sweet as the Festbier. It also wasn’t as… bright? I guess a better way to put it was the flavors were a little dull. Of course, this could all just be a placebo effect triggered from talking with Dan.

It was good to see and talk with Dan for a little bit. He’s putting together an Organic Homebrew Competition in October that I plan on judging over in Santa Cruz. I also asked him about future GB beers and he has their seasonal Winterbock coming up as well as a smoked beer (in my slightly drunken state, I didn’t write down the exact beer style. It could be their Schwartzbier).

I’m looking forward to their next tapping event and I hope to see more of you there.

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