Octoberfest from Saranac Brewing

By Guest Reviewer Jim Walter
of Chittenango, New York


I love fall.  You have the changing colors, college football, fresh apple pies and best of all you have fall seasonal beers!  This weekend was an SU home game and it was going to be cold and wet for the tailgate session.  That called for one thing to be the centerpiece of the menu and that was my homemade venison chili.  So we headed up to the game and along the way we stopped to get beer.  This weather and food just screamed Octoberfest beer, and so I grabbed my go to Octoberfest, a 6-pack of Saranac.  

The beer is a traditional German style amber lager.  It pours a nice copper color and it is a well balanced beer.  It pours nicely into a pint glass with an inch of head and the head stays with it for a few sips.  Its maltiness is well balanced by the hops and it has all of the fall style flavor you expect from an Octoberfest.  The beer clocks in with an ABV of 5.4%.  It is brewed in Utica, NY by the FX Matt Brewing Company in one of the longest operating breweries in the United States.   Here are the Matt’s talking about this year’s Octoberfest.  (If you ever find yourself in Utica the tour of this brewery is first rate).

It was the perfect pairing to the chili which on a scale of 1-10 comes in at about a 7.5 on the heat scale.  You can find the beer a number of ways.  They have it on tap all over the northeast this time of year, but you are more likely to see their Pumpkin on tap first.  It is in the 12-beers a fallin mix pack, but there are only two of them in the pack.  The way I enjoy it is in the 6 or 12-pack which is easily found in better beer stores everywhere.


Cheers!