Oktoberfest Beer Tasting - Ten Autumn Beers Tasted at Oktoberfest Beer Tasting

For this season’s ten beers recommendations, I’ve added some tasting notes. But they are not mine. I gathered a small beer tasting panel to try all of the beers and to share what they thought. The members of this panel ranged from self described beer snobs to strict wine drinkers that agreed to slum it with some beer for one night.

I presented the beers blindly. The tasters didn’t know what style or brand of beer that they were trying. This produced some very interesting comments that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. For example, some of the tasters detected notes of pineapple and even pickled pears in the pumpkin beers. They probably wouldn’t have noticed these flavors if they were stretching to taste the pumpkin.

I choose five styles and presented two beers from each style: Oktoberfest, pumpkin, Saison, porter, and stout. Then the tasters not only made notes but compared the two beers from each style. So, though they didn’t know the style presented, they did know that every two beers were from the same style.

Here are the results. The panel's pick is marked with an asterisk:

Oktoberfest
• *Spaten Oktoberfest
• Paulaner Oktoberfest

Pumpkin
• O'fallon Pumpkin Beer
• *Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale

Saison
• Schlafly Saison Ale
• *New Belgium Saison Harvest Ale

Porter
• Boulevard Bully! Porter
• *Anchor Porter

Stout
• *Bells Kalamazoo Stout
• Sierra Nevada Stout