2017 Das Best Oktoberfest

The Baltimore version of Das Best Oktoberfest (which also takes place on another date at National Harbor) used to be the Maryland Brewers Oktoberfest and was held at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium from 2002 to 2012 before moving to the Ravens stadium parking area in 2013. Das Best Oktoberfest differs from its predecessor not only in location but also in scope. The former festival featured exclusively Maryland breweries (hence its name), while the newer one includes basically anyone who will pay for a booth: foreign breweries, wineries, distilleries, cideries, meaderies, and makers of hard soda and hard lemonade.

The VIP session officially started at noon, but they let folks in earlier, maybe because in years past there would be hundreds of people in line at noon. Upon entering I met up with various friends and walked around, not getting my first beer until I'd been there for 15 minutes. Contrast this to my usual method of making a beeline to the beer stations.

We headed over to the Guinness booth, where they served their lager on draught and stout in bottles. They said that the new brewery slated to open in Relay in 2018 would brew only their lager there, and that their stout would continue to be brewed in Ireland. They gave away T-shirts with their name and big Baltimore Beer Week logos on them.

At this point I split off from my friends to pursue beer but managed to keep running into them. Here are (most of) the beers I tried:

  1. Guinness Blonde Lager
  2. Guinness Export Stout (bottle)
  3. All Tech Bourbon Barrel Ale
  4. Hysteria Mad Sun IPA
  5. Honor Brewing Cherry Wheat
  6. Terrapin Luau Krunes (passionfruit IPA)
  7. Flying Dog St. Eadman Abbey Ale (bottle)
  8. Duclaw Collusion (collaboration with Goonda Beersmiths)
  9. Duclaw Obol (oat wine)
  10. Duclaw 865cc (coffed stout)
  11. Key Brewing One for the Thumb (milkshake IPA with vanilla, mango, and guava)
  12. Jailbreak Feed the Monkey
  13. Jailbreak Poor Righteous IPA
  14. Calvert Brewing Good Company
  15. Flying Dog Idaho 7 (bottle)
  16. Sam Adams Rebel IPA
  17. Bells Two Hearted Ale
  18. Boulevard Berliner Weiss
  19. Harpoon UFO Cranberry
  20. Affligem Blonde
  21. Manor Hill Mild Manor'd Amber (cask)
  22. Heavy Seas Partner Ships Stone
  23. Heavy Seas Siren Noire (chocolate stout aged in bourbon barrels)
  24. Nepenthe New England IPA (homebrew)
  25. Nepenthe Oaty Saison (homebrew)
  26. Evolution Hops Limon
  27. Harpoon Jacques au Lantern (Belgian pumpkin ale)
  28. Magic hat low key seasion ipa
  29. Magic Hat Ticket to Rye IPA
  30. Two Roads Roadsmary's Baby
  31. Southern Tier Imperial Pumpking
  32. Boulevard Tough Kitty (milk stout)
  33. New Belgium Voodoo Ranger
  34. Wynridge Barn Dog (chocolate vanilla beer)
  35. Yards Sons of Ben
  36. Yards Rival IPA
  37. Hysteria Darkest Hour (stout)
  38. Oliver 206 IPA
  39. Hysteria Wet Hop Harvest.
  40. Brewers Art Penguin Pils
  41. Sweetwater Goin' Coastal (IPA with pineapple) (bottle)
  42. Nepenthe Citra/Mosaic/Amarillo IPA (homebrew)

I also tried some non-beer libations:

  1. Bold Rock Apple IPA (cider)
  2. Small Town Mountain Ale (soda)
  3. Small Town Not Your Father's Root Beer
  4. Charm City Meadworks Elderberry
  5. Cupcake (German riesling)
  6. Moritz Thienelt Echte Kroatzbeere (blackberry licquer)

I was not very impressed with the beer selection. In fact, my favorite beer of the day was a homebrew (the Nepenthe New England IPA). Of course, I missed Ballast Point's Unfiltered Sculpin and some other VIP beers due to hanging out with friends rather than hitting the taps early on, so perhaps one of those would have been noteworthy. Here are photos of some of the beer stations:

Nice photo bomb!

By the way, New Belgium was there, and was one of the least visited places. Remember when people used to think Fat Tire was great when it wasn't distributed here? Interesting how their attitude changed after it became readily available.

Here are nome of the non-beer stations:

There were many goings-on in addition to the libations: bands and contests on the main stage, tricycle races, cornhole, various costumes, free food samples, and many hired ladies that added decor. Some of the ladies traveled considerable distances for the event; the two on either side of the cask below drove up from North Carolina.

At about 2:30 a cask of Loose Cannon was tapped on the stage, which was fortunate since we missed the Opening Tap Ceremony that had happened a few hours earlier. Below left is a photo; below right is a video.

Incidentally, the Opening Tap Ceremony, which occurs at this festival each year, marks the unofficial start of Baltimore Beer Week (which actually begins the day before). Below is a photo of the founders of Baltimore Beer Week, Dominic Cantalupo on the left and Joe Gold on the right.

After that, they announced the winners of the homebrew contest. To my great surprise, I won both 1st and 2nd place with my kriek and my Belgian strong ale, respectively. The last time I'd won this contest was in 2005 (see photo in the addendum). In the photo below, on the left is the 3rd place winner; and on the right is my friend Chris Anderson, who owns Maryland Homebrew.

The rest of the afternoon was spent drinking. It got crowded late in the day - even the crappy beers had lines. By 5:00 I'd had enough and headed back home on the Light Rail.

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Addendum

Here are some photos from this festival when it was the Maryland Brewers Oktoberfest. This group is from 2004:

The photo below is from 2005. I won both 1st and 2nd place in the homebrew contest (with a gueuze and a stout, respectively) and they photographed me with some of the hired ladies.

A web page for the 2011 Maryland Brewers Oktoberfest is here.