Hacker-Pschorr Original Oktoberfest:
Greetings and salutations to all my dear readers and welcome to our last Oktoberfest beer review of the year.  I figured that we should end this thing where it all began, with a German beer brewed with the Reinheitsgebot (purity law) of 1516 and, unbeknownst to me, is part of the Paulaner family- but so is Dixie beer, go figure that one out in your spare time.  Hacker-Pschorr has been brewing since 1417 and really, they seem to be doing something right because you don’t stick around for almost 600 years doing something half-assed.  HP’s Original Oktoberfest is a beer that ranks consistently in the top 10 listing of brews for the season and really, I think that’s a valid position for it  This formula is the supposedly “really” close to their recipe from the original Oktoberfest in 1810 and is one of the only six breweries allowed to serve at the festival.  So how does it taste?  Well it pours the familiar Marzen color of dark amber with a nice off-white head that reaches a peak height of about a fingers worth then settles down to a thin film and a nose of sweet raisins and malts.  The beer’s taste has a very malt filled front end with a bite of carbonation that moves to a nice balanced mid tongue of hops and malts.   The back end brings out the sweetness that is found in the nose and a touch of hops that moves to the aftertaste with only a slight hint of skunk.  So this is where we end up, the last Oktoberfest beer of the year and it’s a good one, and I might even say a great one.  Not to par with the Spaten Oktoberfest but equally enjoyable and I’d put it second in line, displacing Paulaner.  Definitely worth tracking down and enjoying.