German Märzen beer - hearty, amber-colored, malty, and finely balanced lager that is refreshing and filling all at once - was the original staple of Oktoberfest celebrations. The Monk's Fest comes to us from the beautiful monastery at Weissenohe, in the green wooded hills of Franconia, northern Bavaria. This rare, traditional, and very tasty 'liquid bread', is as close as you can get to the real thing.
At Weissenohe the Reinheitsgebot (the famous Bavarian beer purity law) is still observed, and the beer is made by the traditional, and painstaking, double-decoction method, which is only rarely observed in Bavaria today. Urban Winkler's brewing methods have been handed down to him from earlier generations of brew-masters at Weissenohe, and refined in accordance with the teachings of older brew-masters in the area. Franconians, a famously stubborn and uncompromising people, still support almost 300 small breweries in their tiny corner of Bavaria, and have kept the old ways even as breweries in the rest of Bavaria modernize, stream-line, and forget.
