Genny has always done the Bock once a year, and it’s the best thing they do. Now suddenly, in 2016 they apparently decided to leverage that success with another annual varietal, an Oktoberfest beer, which started showing up in stores in late July. A festy design with a white-blue checked pattern of lozenges, with a half-gone German guy hoisting a stein over the logo.
And this beer has the G-Bock’s same subtitle: “Special Edition” at the bottom, but the similarity ends there. Color is paler than Bock but darker than the other Gennys. Does taste a little heartier than a regular Genesee, but there’s no relation here to any German beer. Instead, this is beer candy.
Silly sweet it is, nearly to the point of being sickly-sweet, which is the same reason i can’t do more than 1 in a row of Genny’s sub-branded JW Dundee Honey Brown. After one Honey Brown, you feel like you’ve just eaten a whole head-sized wad of cotton candy, and while that was enjoyable, the idea of eating a second head-sized wad of cotton candy makes you a tad queasy.
Same thing here. The sweetness might come from unfermented malts or, since this is $9 for a 12-pack, they might just have dropped some hi-fuct corn syrup and dye into a few runs of finished Genny. Who knows? Genny’s beers have always been low-information on the cans and cartons.
The point is that where a German oktoberfest brew has a bite of bitter over a slightly more sweet body than usual, this has sweet body smothering a slight more bitter than a real Genny. College girls may like this, but it’s not for me. Accordingly, the proper rating is 3.6 in my scheme.