A Ramstein one-off, plus Oktoberfest

Another foray into one-off beers by weizen beer specialist High Point Brewing, which also for the first time bottled a non-wheat beer under its Ramstein brand.

Additionally of note for High Point: The brewery has gotten the earliest jump ever on producing its signature Oktoberfest seasonal.

Released last Friday, High Point offered up a new one-off brew, a bourbon-barrel aged version of its 6.5% ABV maibock, taking the beer beyond its German traditions and big malty profile by giving it a pleasing tang with the addition of some lactobacillus and oak characteristics from the whiskey barrel.

The brew made for a well-received follow-up to a Belgian-style chocolate cherry sour ale that High Point brewed at the end of last year.

For quite a while now, craft brewers up and down the state have been whiskey-barreling some of their beers for maturation and flavor effect. But the Buffalo Trace distillery oak High Point got its hands on was an inaugural effort at bourbon-barrel aging a Ramstein beer. 

The maibock, like the chocolate cherry sour, were tasting room treats, extras for tour patrons who show up at the Butler brewery for the Ramstein lager and wheat beers.

The jazzed-up maibock went fast, gone by early Saturday afternoon, reflecting the potential of craft brewers' tasting rooms to engage the public with small-batch beers that also give breweries and their tour patrons an additional beer theme to take up. It's all part of what lawmakers in Trenton enabled last year when they updated the rules for Garden State craft breweries.

"We had four kegs that we allocated for the brewery. We were open for four hours, and we sold out of them," says High Point owner Greg Zaccardi. "(It's) the excitement we have now with this new law. Let's be honest, we can make a few more dollars, but we also have to make it interesting. People are going to come here and buy the beer only if it's really worth coming."

The flavor profile of the barrel-aged maibock featured caramel-like signatures against a bright citrus quality, plus bourbon and vanilla from the wood.

"It had that tartness, that yogurty tang," he says. "But the nice thing about it is, you get that thirst-quenching sensation, then it stops to a clean finish of bourbon and vanilla."

Giving the maibock the barrel tweaking, taking it outside its traditional construct, put an emphasis on the sensory elements of beer.

"This was a way for us to get to people, get them to come in and think about what's going on – and they're educated," Greg says. "It draws attention to all the elements of beer. People start talking about aroma, they start talking about texture, they start talking about balance, complexity, depth of flavor."

The beer was a one-off, and though it's gone, there's more where that came from, so to speak.

"I'm not saying we're going to make a beer like it every week. But I would like to believe that every other month or so we're coming out with some sort of unique way of making beer taste different that what you're expecting," Greg says.

Meanwhile, High Point already has its top-rated Ramstein Oktoberfest in kegs. July has historically been the month High Point began brewing the märzen for its annual release on the second Saturday in September. (For years, the brewery has made a tour-day event of the märzen, ceremoniously tapping an Austrian oak keg to salute Oktoberfest.)

Over the past year few years, High Point has begun brewing the 6% ABV märzen earlier and earlier, reflecting increased demand for the seasonal, which, as a lager, requires the requisite longer conditioning time. This year, brewing began right after Memorial Day so High Point could both boost production by about 20 percent from last year and better work to distributors' needs.

"In May, we got a list of pre-orders for Oktoberfest from our distributors. They said, 'We'll pick it up in July if you have it,' " Greg says. "So why would we not brew it, if we had bona fide purchase orders for it? That's really what drove us to adjust our production schedule."

Meanwhile, the märzen's junior sibling, Ramstein Amber Lager (5.5% ABV, also called Northern Hills Amber Lager), was recently bottled for the first time ever, a moment that also marked the first instance of High Point bottling a beer other than its signature Blonde, Classic dunkel and doppelbock wheats. (Ramstein Oktoberfest, maibock, imperial pilsner, and golden lager are draft-only brews; the same goes for a 6% ABV pale ale that works its way in and out of High Point's lineup.)

"The beer is a hoppy, slightly lower-gravity sessionable version of our Oktoberfest. We have a lot of interest and (accolades) for our Oktoberfest, and we thought about making it year-round. People always ask us to make it year-round. It's just not designed for that," Greg says. "We wanted to make something that was in a similar vein but could be consumed year-round, and that's what this beer is."

Some of the amber lager, which is a favorite among Ramstein's Facebook followers, is destined for the festival Mondial de la Bière Europe in France Sept. 12-15. It's at least the second time Ramstein beers will be at the event.

Oktoberfest is alive and well

This time a year ago, you could find some Internet chatter using Oktoberfest as a punching bag. (Find it here and here.)

The gist of those two observations is: The US craft beer market is awash in crappy takes  – poorly executed or just plain wrong – on a hallowed German style that the Germans themselves have essentially forsaken by putting profit over quality and tradition. In that regard, American brewers should heed the call to rescue it, like they've done with some Belgian styles.

Meanwhile, Oktoberfest as an event has become this tourist-trap-hijacked drunkfest of a calendar date, that most of Germany, save Bavaria, ignores. To be a good student of beer you should be savvier and explore what else Deutschland has to offer.

There's some truth to these observations. Oktoberfest beers dispatched from the homeland to this market are disappointing, and a Web search for Oktoberfest will overrun your browser with hits for booking a trip to Munich. (That's been the case for a while, a well-worn lament by now.)

But, in terms of signal to noise, there's plenty of noise in these observations. For one thing, märzen beer is still alive and well – in the US. There may be plenty of dreck out there, but there's also plenty of cream (that's been the case with craft beer for a while now), as American brewers spot an opening and re-create, even re-imagine, a beer.

As for Oktoberfest the event, it is what it is: a seasonal money-maker for it host city. That's the tilt of the Earth these days. No sense in crying over tipped beer.

And, as far as the subset point goes, that Germans make other brews besides fest beers, well duh. In the craft beer world, hardly anyone thinks (or thought) fest beer is all Germany ever brings to the table.

Even in New Jersey and its environs, where down-the-nose looks our way think us a bit behind the curve, brews like rauchbier, gose and snappy Berliners have been in the mugs for some time, either by our brewers or found on packaged goods stores' import shelves. Germany is not in its rookie season in here in the states, and thanks to the Web, beer drinkers here get around without having stray too far from home (read that as exposure, access to styles, style information).

No matter what the Germans brew these days – and to be sure, they have been dumbing down the fest beer for years now – Americans aren't, nor can they be expected, to be keepers of beer flames. American brewers hate rules as much as they respect them.

For US brewers, styles are as much a blueprint or suggestion as they are, well, the actual style. American craft brewers are too inclined to rewrite the rules, deconstruct them and rebuild them in a hybrid, a mash-up, or cover the style by doing a stellar job at it. That's what American craft brewers do well. It's not so much being the keeper of a flame, but rather, picking up where someone else left off and putting your own stamp on it.

"Is it true that the spectrum of Oktoberfests that were available last year really wasn't that exciting? Absolutely. But that's how craft beers have flourished: They've been better than the competition," says Greg Zaccardi, whose High Point Brewing last week released its 2012 incarnation of Ramstein Oktoberfest Lager Beer, the first of 180 barrels of the seasonal planned for this year. "When the competition becomes lame, you have a great opportunity. If what was arriving here was knocking it out of the park, it would be harder for everybody."

High Point Brewing (located in Butler) was founded as a wheat beer brewery in the German tradition and has produced the decoction-mashed fall märzen for 14 of its 16 years in business, the very first batches being made at the request of a now-closed German restaurant in Atlantic Highlands. Ramstein Oktoberfest enjoys high marks from the critics and continues to draw big crowds to the brewery on the second Saturday of September, its annual release date.

"For our concept, for who we are, we've always taken a lead from the traditional style guidelines and put our own thumbprint (and) signature on that by tweaking it in the direction we find to be exciting," Greg says. "That means we have to start with being as good as the benchmark for that style and doing something that makes it a little better."

At Climax Brewing, doppelbocks, märzens, helles and Oktoberfests are genuinely a matter of heritage. Dave Hoffmann, owner of the Roselle Park brewery, is a New Jerseyan, but a German, too, via both parents. Screwing up the style is a sacrilege, and something that flies in face of his beer-drinking experience. Märzens and bocks are among his favorites.

Elsewhere around the state and country, there are able interpretations of the fall style (Left Hand in Colorado and Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland come to mind), but things get more elaborate than just capitalizing on a seasonal.

For a while now, Tom Stevenson at Triumph Brewing in Princeton has made those goses, rauchbiers, among other Old World styles (including gruit, a style Tim Kelly at Atlantic City's Tun Tavern has made as well). Carton Brewing (Atlantic Highlands) makes a quite-worthy Berliner. At some point, these brews become more than an introduction to beer: They develop a wide following and generate expectations.

But back to an earlier point ... There are some things that Internet chatter got right. Namely, there is bad märzen out there (try a Leinenkugel's if you don't think so; at venerated Boston Beer Company, the Octoberfest – that's their spelling – grades a B+ at most. But that speaks to their craft-beer bandwidth – above-average, serviceable beers that are accessible to a very wide audience.)

Honestly, though, the observation about bad beers in the marketplace is one that really knows no exclusive style, nor season, meaning it's hardly exclusive to Oktoberfest beers. You can say it about virtually every beer style out there, every seasonal. Alongside the good and the great, there are bad IPAs, bad APAs, bad wits, bad summer seasonals, dubious pumpkin ales, out-of-balance winter warmers, crappy stouts and lame porters. The craft beer market is crowded and getting more crowded. Not everyone hits the mark, and sadly, sometimes it shows.

On the other point, Slob-toberfest ... well, Oktoberfest in the US is very much Cinco de Mayo in lederhosen. But then, Cinco de Mayo is St. Patrick's Day dancing to a mariachi band. And Halloween is a tavern party in a witch's hat, meaning all of those calendar events have devolved into bar promotions of some sort. It's been that way for too long to think about. And the atmosphere surrounding that says, So what? It's business. If you're a brewer, and a bar wants to feature your beer, seasonal or not, you want the tap handle.

Meanwhile, Oktoberfest in Munich is indeed one of the city's paydays, something it can rely on to generate revenues, fill hotels, plow money into the local economy, never mind how it started or what it used to be in the eyes of anyone. It is what it is, and for Munich, it's not unlike New York counting on a lot of people showing up in Times Square on New Year's Eve, or Louisville depending on a Kentucky Derby bounce the first Saturday of every May.

Again, so what? It's commerce.

Just like brewers producing a seasonal, i.e. Oktoberfest ... it's commerce, a business decision. If it plays, it pays. Ask any brewer if having a reliable revenue stream is worth the trouble, the answer is likely to be "yes."

"For us, it's really important to look at celebrating what we strive to do well," Greg says.

New dimension at High Point – more space

Regulars who make it to High Point Brewing's open houses probably noticed over the past couple of months the knocked down wall at the far end of the brewery.

It is what you think: underway expansion by the makers of the Ramstein craft beer lineup. In July, High Point took over the next-door space in the Butler industrial complex that the 15-year-old brewery has long called home. The space previously had been used to warehouse DVDs produced by an indy filmmaker and distributor, EI Independent Cinema (makers of the B-movie Spiderbabe).

Like a lot of the longtime Garden State production craft brewers, High Point is running at capacity, making the business of brewing the year-round core brands and squeezing in the seasonal brews a tougher balancing act. (High Point also does contract brewing.) Hence, the need to expand.

High Point owner Greg Zaccardi (that's Greg above pouring samples from the September open house) says the back wall came down in late July, and the extra 2,000 square feet of space was immediately used for storing empty kegs. It will also be used for grain storage, and sometime next month the brewery's cold box will be moved into there.

Relocating the cold box will open up 400 square feet for the installation of more 30-barrel fermenters, an undertaking that had been on the brewery's 2011 to-do list. That project is now slated for just after the start of 2012.

Greg says the brewery needs to get past the Oktoberfest season, an über-busy time of year for High Point, which specializes in German-style beers. On the heels of that is another big-selling seasonal, Ramstein Winter Wheat Doppelbock.

(Look for more of the weizenbock to make it into 12-ounces bottles this season than last year. Most of it was draft only last time, and a larger-than-normal portion of the production run was set aside for turning into Icestorm eisbock.)

Speaking of Oktoberfest, High Point brewed 10 15-barrel batches of its popular märzen this year. Demand for the seasonal was up 25 percent, and the brewery had to make a decision about whether to temporarily cut back on brewing Blonde wheat beer, a year-round Ramstein brew, when it began its production run of Oktoberfest back in July.

EVENT NOTE: High Point will tap an Austrian oak barrel of the märzen as part of an Oktoberfest event at the Pilsener Haus & Biergarten in Hoboken on Friday.

Fall classic

Some scenes from High Point Brewing's 2010 Ramstein Oktoberfest debut on Saturday. Video was shot using an iPhone.

Märzen chronicles

When you flipped the calendar page from August to September, you probably reset your palate from summer beers to something chewy and malty.

Never mind that there are pumpkin ales on the shelf right now. Märzens – Oktoberfests – are the beers that remind you that fall is the best season of the year.

And with this style, New Jersey interpretations aren't to be ignored. In fact, you'll find some exceptional ones made in the Garden State, in North and South Jersey. Over the next couple weeks, you'll see them highlighted here.

First up is High Point's draft-only Ramstein Oktoberfest. The Butler brewery's oldest lager brand has developed a substantial following over the past decade and earned a top rating on BeerAdvocate. The 2010 version debuts this Saturday at the brewery's September open house (from 2 p.m.-4 p.m.)

Like all but one (Revelation Golden Lager) of High Point's 11 beers, its Oktoberfest is the product of decoction mashing, an Old World brewing method whose origins predate thermometers and its goal aims to maximize efficiency in the conversion of grain starches to sugars. But the process also creates malty flavors that are rich and memorable.

"It's the difference between sauté and quick blanch," says High Point founder Greg Zaccardi.

The brewing process, in which a portion of the grain is pulled aside, boiled it, then returned to rest of the mash, takes longer than the infusion-mash methods other Jersey brewers use to make great beers of their own. Decoction also costs more in crew time and utilities.

"The finished product is worth it. We hope people get it, and I think they do," Greg says.

As a business, High Point was born a wheat beer company, and the decoction process was more suited to producing those styles. "Our brewhouse was custom designed for wheat beers," Greg says.

Over time, the brewery shifted its emphasis from wheat beers to embrace other styles, including pilsners and Vienna lagers. The brewery's Oktoberfest was originally tailor-made for a now-closed German restaurant in Atlantic Highlands in Monmouth County.

The Ramstein märzen quickly outgrew those beginnings, and the 140 barrels brewed this season – with an early start in June instead of July like past years – reflect a 30-plus percent increase in production from last year.

"It's draft-only, and it sells out draft-only," Greg says. "The way our brewery is set up, packaging draft beer is better for everybody, for the brewers, for the brewery, for the beer drinkers, for the distributors, for the retailers. We don’t at this point have a need to bottle it. It’s a short season … Fresh beer from a keg is great for Oktoberfest."

'Untraditional for a traditional brewery'

High Point Brewing will soon roll out the 2010 version of its Ramstein Oktoberfest.

Followers of the Butler brewery know the märzen speaks to German traditions of noble hops and a decoction mash for a rich, malty beer. And in a growing Ramstein tradition, the draft-only festbier will be debuted at the brewery's September open house (Sept. 11 this year, 2 to 4 p.m.).

But sometimes tradition can use a little standing on its head, like the West Coast turn High Point took with its draft-only golden lager, another malty Ramstein brand that holds the No. 2 spot behind its top-seller Blonde weiss beer. (The golden lager is brewed as Ghost Pony lager for the Harvest Restaurant group across North Jersey. Charlie Schroeder, brewmaster at Trap Rock, part of the Harvest chain, makes a house version Ghost Pony for the Berkeley Heights brewpub.)

For High Point's Aug. 14th open house, Revelation Golden Lager was jazzed up with a load of Centennial hops left over from a homebrew contest the brewery co-sponsored with The Office Beer Bar & Grill. (High Point scaled up the winning pale ale recipe and brewed it for The Office's several locations.)

"For a long time, we've been known as a brewery that makes very malt-driven beers that are traditional in the German way of making beer," says High Point owner Greg Zaccardi. "I guess what we did a was something very untraditional for a traditional brewery."

Greg explains the late-summer open house feature this way:

"I took an immeasurable amount of Centennial hops and put it into a keg ... then we filled it up with Golden Lager." The citrusy Centennials are "very untraditional for a German beer. It was a total redesign on the aroma and flavor of our traditional lager."

At the open house, unfiltered versions of Revelation – with and without the Centennial hops – were on tap for the monthly brewery tour-takers.

A few diehard Ramstein fans made the grapefruit-hop face upon tasting the West Coast version, but the brew still found favor among the crowd.

"I think it was a big surprise for everybody, including myself," Greg says. "We got a number of people interested in trying it; we sold a number of growlers. I thought it was a great way to explain to people in taste terms what hops can do to beer."

FOOTNOTES: Pictured up top is Ron Clark of Oakland, who makes the obelisk-like taphandles for High Point.

A shout-out to Chuck Kady (left) of Wayne, who sported a Kentucky Ale T-shirt (the brewery is located in Lexington, Ky.).

Chuck was three months beyond a pass through the Bluegrass State, where he visited his brother-in-law, who's stationed at Fort Knox and lives near Brandenburg, Ky.