If you follow me on social media, you’re probably plenty sick of hearing about Oktoberfest beers by now. I’ve been drinking a TON of them. The style is at least in my top three, if not my absolute favorite, and becomes an absolute obsession for me this time of year. For the second year in a row I spend the fall seeking out as many local examples as I can get my hands on and trying to figure out which one is really the “best” for me.

This is what I call my great Oktoberfest Quest – and this year is pretty spectacular. I limited the competition to just packaged versions of Oktoberfests, because… well… it’s a lot of beers. I spent a bunch of evenings working my way through a bracket of them all, putting them head to head until we were left with the final four – which is what this episode is all about. (you can see the whole bracket here if you’d like)

I brought in some help (big thanks to Marco Penilla from Cellar Dweller for hanging out with me and making sure that things stayed fair, and to my wife for being a great tie breaker and beer pourer to keep things blind) – and we finished up the competition in epic fashion… leaving Listermann as the Grand Champion and with the title this year as the Best Packaged Cincinnati Oktoberfest.

If you’re looking for all the information about THIS year’s Oktoberfest celebration – check out this!