Saw this meme on another forum and thought I might get some good feedback here.
My list from this past weekend’s party we hosted
Long Trail Unfiltered IPA
Harpoon Oktoberfest
Spaten Oktoberfest
Magic Hat H.I.P.A.
great forum here, glad to now be a part of it.
A nifty thing about those IPAs is they don’t go bad as fast as the ones you make with not as much hops in them.
The last of some batches (of nonIPAs) my husband has had to open carefully in a bowl with another one on top and a towel handy.
What a waste!
Drink them faster I say
or at least lets have a party before they get that way.
Here, here! and/or Hear, Hear! 
I miss homebrewing. never really got more complex than a brown ale, but it was fun (and delicious).
I’m kind of an ArrogantBastard fan myself. Can’t seem to find it in Louisiana though.
Home brew is great. Long as you’ve got a good supplier.
I don’t care for the Harpoon Oktoberfest so much. The Spaten Oktoberfest is a solid, but hardly exciting Oktoberfest beer, although I can’t imagine it travels well. I had Long Trail Unfiltered at some point, but I don’t remember it very well. The Magic hat H.I.P.A. is good if you like the super-hoppy beers that are the current fad (and it’s a Spring beer, not an Autumnal brew).
the one other one we had was Hofbräu München Oktoberfestbier. I liked it a little more than the Spaten.
I did see that Becks has a new (i thnk it was new) Oktoberfest. may have to try that one as well.
In terms of commercial type beers, I do like Saranac’s Pumkin Ale, and Samuel Adams’ Oktoberfest. But right now we have 15 gallons of various types of beer brewing away. We have an Oktoberfest lager (i believe it’s a lager) lagering away in our freezer we converted to a rerigerator. We’re also going to be doing our own Pumpkin Pie Ale as soon the stout is done (we bottle on Saturday! 
) which will be great for the Fall.
I can’t get my husband to start fall brewing until most of the inventory he warehoused over the summer is gone.
The grand kids think its hilarious that some of grandpa’s beers explode when he opens them.
Ours haven’t exploded…yet. I’m waiting for the time that they do. 
As for fall brewing, we didn’t have much in the way of summer inventory, which is unfortunate. I’ve had to endure far too much of the “icky store stuff” all sumer long. But I’m so excited about the stout. It’s the first time we’ve brewed it, and I get to taste the fruits of our labor in about a week and a half!
Why am I not surprised that there’s several other home brewers here…?
“Saving civilization… one pint at a time.”
Hofbrau oktoberfest is one of my all-time favorites. I haven’t seen it in a cat’s age (literally, probably 20 years). I’m also quite fond of Spaten, although I haven’t seen it in several years. I’m finding the Sam Adams this year really not to my taste nor representative of the style. Someone seems to have slipped in extra hops too late in the boil. I’ve been enjoying Beck’s, but for me this year the winner is Dominion, which I assume isn’t available in most of the country. Nice and malty, nice caramel flavor, no detectable bitterness.
Magic Hat has a nice sampler available called Participation or something do do with voting. It’s got an amber ale, a fruit beer, and a couple of other things. Very nicely done.
Last year, there were two pumpkin ales available around here in October, but I haven’t seen any this year. Oh, well. I have one that’s just gone into the secondary. It should be ready around Christmas. I know, a little late.
for those who can find it, Rock Art Brewery has a beer called the Vermonster. Hoppy, 10% ABV and very very good. I’ve seen it in Vermont and also know they sell it in New Jersey as well. The website has actual locations where Rock Art is sold.
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Dumb question from an ignorant (as-yet) non-brewer:
It sounds like these are made from kits of some sort. Does anyone make beer from scratch–say getting hold of some locally grown malted grain (or even malting it yourself), hops, etc. and brewing from it?
Some people around here make wine from local fruit (wild plums and chokecherries both make delicious wine), but I’ve not heard of anyone making local homebrew.
Just something I’ve wondered about.
Tom
You can buy a kit, but I wouldn’t recommend it. They use refined sugar which makes the beer taste wonky, imo.
We do use grains and (at this point) malt extract. They’re not too hard to find…our local natural foods store can obtain the stuff for it. Hops have skyrocketed in price in the past year, so if you are able to grow some yourself, that might be a good thing. But it’s not any more difficult to do it all yourself. And the taste is well worth the trouble.
Speaking of which, we bottled the bitter (the stuff I thought was an ale 
) and the stout today. I got to taste a bit of each, and wow! They were darn good! In another week, I’ll be able to have a bottle of it
I’ve never gotten local grains or anything (I think malting it yourself would be EXTREMELY difficult), but have done all-grain brews. It’s a lot more effort and is best done with some specialized equipment, as the temperatures need to be controlled to about a degree F, and once the conversion (from starch to sugar) is done, it’s a lot easier to extract if you’ve got the right stuff.
I much prefer making beer with extract. It’s a lot easier and less time-consuming, plus I find the results much more predictable. The downside is that it’s a little more expensive, and some people say that there’s a certain uniformity in the results that’s constraining. I don’t find that myself. You can make any style you want by using different adjunct grains, hops, yeasts and malt extracts. These days store-bought beer is so good that I only make the things that either aren’t available in stores (fruit and spice beers) or that I do better than commercial brewers (brown ales, light amber lagers, etc.).
Some kits are better than others. The one thing you absolutely have to do, though, is NOT follow the instructions. If you decide to take the plunge and start with a kit, post or PM for the correct instructions.