Sunday Night Suds - Gordon Biersch Marzen Lager

This week's Sunday Night Suds looks at Gordon Biersch's Marzen Lager.

 

Although the word Marzen would sound like a beer best consumed in the winter, its actually an Octoberfest which was brewed in March so that it could be ready for the fall. As explained by the experts at BA:

 

Before refrigeration, it was nearly impossible to brew beer in the summer due to the hot weather and bacterial infections. Brewing ended with the coming of spring, and began again in the fall. Most were brewed in March (Märzen). These brews were kept in cold storage over the spring and summer months, or brewed at a higher gravity, so they’d (sic) keep. Märzenbier is full-bodied, rich, toasty, typically dark copper in color with a medium to high alcohol content.

The common Munich Oktoberfest beer served at Wies'n (the location at which Munich celebrates its Oktoberfest) contains roughly 5.0-6.0% alcohol by volume, is dark/copper in color, has a mild hop profile and is typically labeled as a Bavarian Märzenbier in style.

 

I picked up this beer in the remainder aisle of a store which will remain nameless. I say this because when I drank this tonight, I realized that the beer had been brewed in April (true to the style) but that the April was April 2012! While some higher alcohol beers can keep for a year or two and even three (the Sixth Glass I reviewed last week had a best before date of March 2016!), a mass produced lager like the Gordon Biersch has an outside freshness of about nine months. As this beer was eighteen months old, the beer had begun to turn and tasted more like apple cider than beer.

 

The Gordon Biersch Marzen Lager is under the Kosher Supervision of the Va'ad of Detroit and has their certification mark on the label. To see what the experts on Beer Advocate think about this brew, please follow this link - beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1551/16254. 

 

As always, please remember to drink responsibly and to never waste good beer unless there is no designated driver. If you've tried this beer or any others which have been reviewed on the kosher beers site, please feel free to post your comments (anonymous comments are acceptable).

 

Finally, if you have seen this post being carried on another site, please feel free to click www.kosherbeers.blogspot.com/ to find other articles on the kosherbeers blogsite. Hey its free and you can push my counter numbers up!