Oktoberfest Week: Re-review: JosephsBrau Oktoberfest
Another past review of an Oktoberfest beer, this one from 2006: JosephsBrau Oktoberfest. The JosephsBrau line of beers is the one contracted by Trader Joe’s and brewed by Gordon Birsch; generally I find they have varying quality and I found this one lacking for the style—though at the time it was cheap so worth it.
(I very much doubt you’d find it as cheap as $3.99 per six-pack any more.)
My original review:
Appearance: Very clear dark gold-orange. Very little head.
Smell: Subtle, clean—malty like a whole grain bread.
Taste: Clean, crisp, kind of neural. Mild. A little more bitter than the style should be. Has a mega-commercial-beer quality.
Mouthfeel: Thinner than it should be (for an Oktoberfest). There’s more body than a mega lager, though not much. Sparkly carbonation on the tongue.
Sadly, I don’t have a decent picture of the beer, and I’m not going to rip it off another site. However, you can find it on BeerAdvocate’s page, and another over here at A Roughneck’s Take on Beer.
Speaking of BeerAdvocate, over there it scores a grade of C+. I’d like to point you to RateBeer, but the site’s still down as of this writing; two years ago they scored it into their 47th percentile.
I really liked the Oktoberfest brew this year. I hadn’t tried it in the past, so I’m not sure if it’s the same recipe or not.
Feel free to steal my image if you like.
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff212/brewedforthought/Beers/CIMG2928.jpg