Jack’s Abby, German brewery Weihenstephan to team up on Oktoberfest-inspired lager
In a partnership that will excite Massachusetts beer fans, Framingham’s Jack’s Abby has teamed up with German brewery Weihenstephan to create an Oktoberfest-inspired collaboration lager.
Founded nearly 1,000 years ago as the brewery of Benedictine monks, Weihenstephan is known for classics like its wheat beer, original helles lager, and of course festbier, served during Germany’s traditional Oktoberfest celebrations. Weihenstephan has collaborated with American breweries only twice before — with Samuel Adams, in 2010, on a beer called Infinium, and on two beers with Sierra Nevada, a wheat beer and an Oktoberfest, in 2018.
Jack’s Abby cofounder Jack Hendler, whose brewery is known for American renditions of European-style lagers, recalls a trip to Germany that got him into the whole beer thing in his early 20s.
“Weihenstephan was actually one of the first breweries that I visited, maybe the first brewery tour that I took,” says Hendler. “We got there late and missed the English tour, and there were only German tours left. And we just begged them. And finally they relented and there happened to be a bilingual person on the tour and they sort of helped to translate what was going on.
“It was just a cool opportunity before I even really knew much about beer. From the beginning of being passionate about beer, they’ve been part of my story and why I’m doing what I’m doing.”
Since then, Hendler has made the trip back to Germany many more times, hooking up in recent years with Matthias Ebner, global brand ambassador for Weihenstephan. On one recent trip, Ebner recalls the pair staying up late talking shop, the one light on in their university building, where the brewery is located, being theirs.
“We don’t just want to say, ‘OK, we have drunk two or 20 beers together and we’re a little bit tipsy, let’s make a beer together,’” says Ebner. “What I like about this project is that it came along organically over five years of friendship.”
It helps, also, that Hendler is literally writing the book on lagers. Ebner helped Hendler set up interviews for the book, connecting him with important folks in the German lager space. The bond between the two is evident, even on a Zoom call where the participants are seven time zones apart.
It says something about the partnership that Weihenstephan, which follows many other German breweries by brewing to exacting standards, put faith in Hendler to run the project. To start, Weihenstephan shared what it calls the “original Bavarian lager yeast strain” with Jack’s Abby. From there, Hendler brewed a beer using a decoction mashing technique, lagering the brew in horizontal tanks, per traditional methods.
“A lot of people ask me, ‘What’s your secret to making those beers?’” says Ebner. “It’s tough for me to answer because it is no secret, it’s just patience. You’re committing to your beer and getting that there is a biochemical process that needs to take place. If you would just add some artificial enzymes or whatever, maybe you can speed that up. But in the end, it’s biochemistry that needs to work.”
Hendler is practicing patience here, too: the beer, called Fest of Both Worlds, was brewed on June 6 and will be packaged on Aug. 7, those two months allowing time-honored chemical processes (which Hendler will explain in his book) to take place. But there’s innovation happening here, too, in this case some cool pool hopping with hop varieties Sterling and Adeena.
“That hop addition gives all the aroma and the flavor of the hops without giving the bitterness,” says Hendler. “So it has this sort of stone fruit, pineapple character, but not in the way of an IPA. This has the finish of an Oktoberfest beer, but it has sort of a fresh hop aroma, maybe reminiscent of a pale ale or something. So you smell it and it smells hoppy, and then you drink it and it’s all malt, sweet, full-bodied.”
Hendler says the beer, which was brewed in Framingham, is tasting great. Ebner, still in Germany, can’t wait to try it. It’ll be a busy month of September for both, with Jack’s Abby hosting several Boston-area events featuring Fest of Both Worlds starting with a collaboration launch at Jack’s Abby’s Framingham brewery on Sept. 14 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. The beer will be available only in Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, and Southern Maine.