Last month, we told you we were ready for the invasion of pumpkin beers, Oktoberfest events, and the promise of Festbiers, Märzens, porters, and amber lagers galore. That time of the year is finally here.
In September, we…
Found out why this brewery buys 1,000+ lb pumpkins…
Dove deep with the sixth-generation brewmaster of Schlenkerla…
Learned the secrets of New York’s imperial stouts and pastry sour masters…
And discovered the highest-rated Festbiers and pumpkin beers of all time (plus, the ones you can buy near you!).
As the 189th Oktoberfest wraps up this week, let’s say prost to one of our favorite months of the year!
Hop Culture’s Top 10 Beers We Drank in September 2024
Who in the Helles Left the Gate Open – Funkytown Brewery x The Black Beer Baron
Chicago, IL
Helles – Who in the Helles Left the Gate Open? That’s the name and question a new collaboration between Funkytown Brewery (one of our “14 Best Breweries of 2022”) and The Black Beer Baron will try to answer.
Based on a late-night cable show featuring preacher Reverend B.W. Smith, who used to ask who left the gate open, Who in the Helles Left the Gate Open aims to raise money for scholarships that provide educational opportunities for Black and Brown brewers.
In 2023, Funkytown Co-Founder and Director of Brew Operations Zachary Day won a Michael James Jackson Foundation (MJF) scholarship, attending a two-week intensive course at Siebel Institute. Similarly, Jay Westbrook, founder of @blackbeerbaron, won an inaugural Illinois Craft Brewers Guild (ICBG) Diversity Scholarship that also helped pay for him to attend a course at Siebel in Chicago.
“That was eleven weeks of hell,” Westbrook jokes. But studying at one of the oldest beer schools in the U.S. has allowed Westbrook to “walk into rooms where people don’t generally look like us,” he says.
As a part of the Open Gate Fundraiser, Funkytown and The Black Beer Baron’s new beer will donate some of the proceeds to the MJF and ICBG diversity scholarships, aiming to pay it forward for those following in their footsteps.
“It only made sense,” says Day. “What can we do to bring more attention to the education of Black brewers and brewing?”
The beer answers who left the gate open for both Day and Westbrook.
“It’s the people who care,” explains Day, citing folks like ICBG Executive Director Ray Stout and MJF Founder and Brooklyn Brewmaster Garrett Oliver. “How can we push that forward?”
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier – Märzen – Schlenkerla (“Heller-Bräu” Trum)
Bamberg, Bayern, Germany
Rauchbier – Ooowee, this beer has quite a history, surviving near extinction. And when the smoke cleared, this smoked beer made a place for itself in local lore.
Rauchbier, which literally translates to “smoked beer” in German, can be a bit polarizing. That said, those with an open mind are rewarded.
“There’s an old Bamberg proverb that when you drink smoked beer … you have to drink three pints to fully appreciate the aroma and flavor,” says Matthias Trum, sixth-generation brewer at Schlenkerla, whose nickname comes from Bamberg slang for walking with a shuffle and your arms swinging. “And, of course, after three pints, you can make your way back to the hotel in a ‘schlenkerla-ish’ or the Schlenkerla way!”
Arguably the most classic example of the style, Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier is a dark, aromatic, bottom-fermented 5.1% ABV lager—essentially a smoked Märzen—brewed with Original Schlenkerla Smokemalt and tapped according to the old tradition directly from the gravity-fed oakwood cask in the fourteenth-century brewery tavern.
“The classic Märzen smoked beer is made with (basically) 100 percent smoked malt and a tiny bit of roast malt to fill out the color differences between malt batches,” says Trum, “because obviously with an open fire, you cannot adjust the color as exactly as in a modern kiln.”
While brewing, Schlenkerla uses a decoction mash to emphasize the malt’s unique notes. “By boiling the mash, you add additional flavors, and you get a more intense and more bread-like aroma in the beer,” explains Trum.
The classic Märzen smoked beer lagers for two months before it’s ready to be drank fresh out of wooden barrels in the tavern, which, if you follow Trum’s advice, is the best place in the world to drink it.
”When you sit on a chair which has been around for 100 years, the table 150 years, and the room around you is 500 years old,” Trum emphasizes, and drink an Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier right from the wooden barrel, well, that will never get old.
Hop Culture Social Media Manager Magic Muncie explored the entire history of this beer and brewery, so it’s worth your time to read the whole piece.
’Til Death Do Us | Freak Folk Bier
Waterbury Village Historic District, VT
Festbier – When a beer wins multiple awards, you know it must be good. Winning a silver medal in the “Festbier” category in the Untappd Community Awards, ‘Til Death Do Us also slips into the top five on Untappd’s list of the all-time top-rated Festbiers.
Freak Folk lagers the unfiltered German-inspired Festbier for twelve weeks, giving this beer the time and space it needs to mature, emerging crisp, clean, and clear.
Festooning – Grimm Artisanal Ales
Brooklyn, NY
Märzen – Grimm doesn’t mess around when Oktoberfest season comes. Festooning follows a traditional step-mashing process with a malt bill of German Vienna and Munich II malts. Which is why we named it in our Top 31 Oktoberfests We’re Drinking This Fall.
The amber lager gives you everything you want in a traditional Märzen: fresh toasted bread with honey, caramel sundae, and all that malty goodness you want when it’s cold and crisp outside.
Night Owl – Elysian Brewing Company
Seattle, WA
Pumpkin Beer – Have you had your fill of pumpkin beer? Last month, we had you covered, showing you Untappd’s All-Time Top-Rated Pumpkin Beers alongside the best versions you can find in most stores near you.
But one of our favorite pumpkin beers came from Elysian Brewing.
Seattle-based Elysian Brewing has hosted its Great Pumpkin Beer Festival each October for the last twenty years. The experts on pumpkin beer have brewed over a hundred pumpkin beers in the brewery’s entire twenty-five-year history, including the world’s first imperial pumpkin ale.
Today, one of the brewery’s best is Night Owl. First brewed in 1997, the pumpkin ale is made with pumpkin puree and juice, then spiced in conditioning with ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice. With vanilla, caramel, brown sugar, and, of course, pumpkin aromas and a creamy mouthfeel, this beer is the signature offering from the pumpkin pack.
And if you can go to the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival this weekend, you might even be able to drink this beer out of a giant pumpkin. Seriously!
Palatine Pils – Suarez Family Brewery
Hudson, NY
German Pils – Suarez Family Brewery Palatine Pils is a favorite amongst the Hop Culture team. Hop Culture Founder Kenny Gould named Palatine Pils one of his favorite beers of 2018. Gould made the trip to this upstate gem after reading a great article from Austin L. Ray.
And we’re not the only ones who think so. On Untappd, this German-style pils ranks as the fourth-highest-rated of all time.
Founded by Dan Suarez, a former homebrewer who became a protege of Sean Hill, founder of Hill Farmstead, Suarez Family Brewery does all the little things right. They pay attention to detail in the brewing process (making pilsners is not easy, my friends), releasing simple, rustic, well-balanced beers (Dan also makes fantastic saisons) and creating an inviting taproom for families far and wide.
Built inside an old lamp factory, Suarez Family Brewery oozes charm, earning a spot on our list of the 15 Best Breweries in Hudson Valley and Upstate New York.
As Above So Below – Mortalis Brewing
Avon, NY
Imperial Coffee Stout – Let’s not beat around the bush. Mortalis makes some of the world’s best, most indulgent, most electrifying, most satisfying smoothie sours and stouts.
Which is why the Avon-based brewery, about five and a half hours northwest of New York City, ranks as the fifth-best brewery in New York on Untappd.
Hop Culture Content Writer Giovanni Albanese Jr. recently profiled the brewery, sitting down with Mortalis Co-Founders Paul Grenier and Dave Luckenbach to discover their secrets.
For instance, few may know that Mortalis brewed a 4.5% ABV cream ale as their first batch on their commercial brew system. “We’re from Rochester, N.Y. [home of Genesee, the maker of the iconic cream ale], so if you don’t brew a cream ale straight out of the gate, I don’t know who you are!” Grenier told Albanese Jr.
Once they banged that out, Mortalis turned it up a notch, making As Above So Below, a 10% ABV imperial stout brewed with loads of local coffee.
As Above So Below was originally brewed by one of Mortalis’ owners, Josh Bauerlein, as a homebrew. According to Grenier, Bauerlein used his favorite coffee from a local roaster and has always loved the imperial stout style.
“It only seemed right that we brew that as our second beer on our system,” Grenier says. “And we have been using that exact same coffee ever since.”
Luckenbach adds, “We’re very well known for that beer. We brew it at least four times a year.”
Ossuary – Ghost Town Brewing
Oakland, CA
Robust Porter – When we stopped by the Oakland-based brewery during a late weekend in September, the air had just turned crisp, and a windy chill began to prick through our casually constructed outfit of layers.
Reading the signs, instead of grabbing one of Ghost Town’s epic hoppy ales, we opted for the only dark thing on the menu—Ossuary.
The 2021 California Craft Beer Cup gold-medal-winning robust porter proved the perfect choice. As we sat slightly shivering in Ghost Town’s beer garden, the rich French roast coffee, caramel, and dark chocolate notes of the dark ale warmed us through.
Hitting a cheeky 6.66% ABV, Ossuary is a devilishly good porter, which Ghost Town says is made with zero adjuncts and has a “disturbingly clean finish.”
Haunted House – Allagash Brewing Company
Portland, ME
Dark Ale – If you know Allagash, you know that Haunted House has become something of its own local lore. According to legend, Allagash brewed this “scarily balanced dark beer” because of a starstruck love for porters.
Full of roasted barley and Blackprinz malt, this beer churns out as dark as the night sky above a graveyard. Allagash shovels in Crystal, Chinook, and Saaz hops for a “dark beer cloaked in notes of coffee, malt, and a devilish hint of hops,” according to Allagash. “This beer ends with a ghost of coffee-flavored bitterness and hauntingly complex malty palate.”
Let It Lager – Alameda Brewing
Alameda, CA
Helles – We stopped by Alameda Brewing in early September after our first-ever pickleball match. With summer hanging on and a slick of sweat on our brow, this helles quenched and replenished.
Brewed with malt kilned right in Alameda from Admiral Maltings, Let It Lager slid down easy with a crisp, refreshing bite that had everything we wanted in a German lager.
Bready in the beginning, thanks to the pilsner malt and white wheat, this helles had a whisper of Noble hop goodness, probably thanks to the Saaz hops.
Lagering for six weeks, Let It Lager lived up to its name—Alameda Brewing gave this beer the time to do its thing. Should we be sorry for greedily drinking it in just a few gulps? Nah, we just ordered another!
