Gold Medal – Great Lakes Oktoberfest
Silver Medal – Three Floyds Munsterfest
Bronze Medal – Third Tier Turnertoberfest
Other Participants – New Glarus Staghorn, Ayinger Oktoberfest
Board of Director Vote
1. Great Lakes Oktoberfest
2. Third Tier TurnerToberfest
3. Three Floyds Munsterfest
4. New Glarus Staghorn
5. Ayinger Oktoberfest
Personal Reaction
For this category, there were 2 that really stuck out from the other 3. One was remarkable and one I thought was easily the worst. The New Glarus Staghorn had that wretched moutch you get from bad German beer. I should be able to describe it better than that, but there is an almost metallic feel to it. My hands down favorite of the day was TurnerToberfest, which is one of the homebrews we submitted. There is a touch of sweetness of front which gives it another layer of complexity to a normally monotonous style. Some may have viewed it as too much of a deviation from the style, which I cannot argue against. The other 3 I actually kept going back and forth on and the flavors started blending together pretty quickly so I stuck with my gut reaction. Great Lakes was extremely consistant from front to back, exactly what I was expecting in the style, really good. Three Floyds, of course, added something extra by bumping up the hop profile, which was a nice touch. I thought Ayinger was a little mellow, but again, very solid from front to back, actually my second favorite beer of the category.