We've reached the end of Oktoberfest season. Tomorrow, we turn to a new page on the calendar, one that's darker, spookier, pumpkinier. But, for now, the sun's shining, the grass is browning, and insects and birds are making music. It's still September and still prime time for an Oktoberfest beer.

To honor the closure of this season of the blog, we're doing a beer from Germany, as is tradition. Spaten is one of the "Big Six" Oktoberfest breweries because they're one of the original Munich breweries that offers their lager at the official celebration. Today, we're drinking Spaten's Oktoberfest Ur-Märzen. Prost!

Spaten (full name Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu) is one of those illustrious breweries whose history goes back centuries. According to "The Spaten Story," the brewery traces its lineage back to 1397 (nearly six-hundred years before the Salem Witch Trials), when a Munich tax document listed a brewer as the owner of the place where Spaten would operate. Through the coming ages, Spaten would grow from Munich's smallest to largest brewery (before being toppled in 1890) as it changed owners again and again. Today, you can find Spaten beer around the world.

Spaten Oktoberfest is not the beer I'm drinking this afternoon. So, we'll get our intel from the good folks over at BeerAdvocate, who list the 5.9% ABV lager I have as a darker Märzen than what's sold at Oktoberfest.

Diving into the bouquet, I find some nice bread and caramel notes, coupled with a touch of honey. What's unfortunate is the amount of skunk I'm picking up. This is packaged in a green bottle, which explains the Heineken thing that's going on. If it weren't for that, the nose would be pleasant. As it stands, though, I can understand Melba's two quick whiffs.

The palate here is also skunky. Looking beyond that, I find honey, bread, caramel, biscuits, and toffee; really, everything you'd want in a good Märzen. But that skunkiness kills it. It lingers with the malty sweetness in the finish and sours that whole affair.

I'm bummed because the mouthfeel here is perfect. It's full and frothy, calling me back to the bottle for another pull. But the flavor is keeping me at an arm's distance.

If you clicked that BeerAdvocate link earlier, you'll learn that this Ur-Märzen's made exporting. Which makes sense. It evokes a sense of Oktoberfest without really leaning into it. I imagine this is what folks who went to small-town American Oktoberfest celebrations in the '70s drank. The spirit and tradition are both there, but they're not perfectly intertwined.

I hate to do it, but Spaten Oktoberfest Ur-Märzen doesn't get as high of marks as the other German Oktoberfest beers I've had. If it were shipped in a brown bottle, it'd definitely score higher. The stuff in this green glass, however, gets at 7.0/10. I hope that I can get out to Munich during the real Oktoberfest someday so I can try Spaten's festbier. It's gotta be better than this.