Castle & Cairn

A bit of Oktoberfest History Started in 1810 as a public celebration for the wedding of Crown Price Ludwig (later King), the first Oktoberfest took place on October 12th just outside of gates of Munich. It featured horse racing, food, and huge amounts of beer, drawing large crowds and becoming enshrined in annual tradition. Early Oktoberfest beers resembled dark lagers such as dunkels, but over time the focus shifted with Spaten Brewery's introduction of Märzenbier (Märzen - meaning brewed in March, and then stored over the summer). Spaten continued to innovate and introduced what we know as the first beer specifically branded as "Oktoberfest" in 1872, a continued evolution of the Märzen style. In the late 1970s, Paulaner introduced the Festbier style which gained prevalence as changing tastes shifted to these bright pale Munich lagers with Nobel hops. In general, Märzen is a malty German amber lager with clean, rich, toasty and bready malt flavor, minimal bitterness, and...

Trends come and go: Craft Beer, Hard Seltzer, Canned Cocktails, and more. In the world of beverage, the currents are constantly shifting, but one drink has an irrevocable grip on America: Light Beer. Good old beer flavored beer may take a hit from new competition, but brands like Miller Lite and Michelob Ultra constantly sit at the top of sales volume lists, even with the fall of Bud Light and rise of Modelo's Flagship.   But which light beer is best? Let's find out. Methodology - Light Beer Ranking Taste preferences vary significantly between consumers, but across a large sample we should be able to get a somewhat representative picture of the populations preferences. For this ranking, we will combine data sourced from multiple beer rating sites with an internal Castle & Cairn house ranking to create an overall beer quality score. The starting population of beer brands will be those that are explicitly branded as "flagship light" or beers with less than 100 calor...

As a habitual caffeine abuser, I have a soft spot for Monster, both for their expansive lineup of flavors as well as their support for Sports and E-sports. Coffee is my standard caffeination vector, so the Java Monster suite of products is the perfect mix of bean flavor and energy boost. In this post, I'll provide my personal rankings and rationale for what is a very strong lineup.  Note that I have not been compensated in any way for this write-up... I just like them. Currently,  Monster Energy 's Java Monster lineup has five available flavors: Mean Bean - Vanilla Irish Crème Loca Mocha - Chocolate Salted Caramel Café Latte There are two "triple shot" versions of the Vanilla and Mocha which contain 300mg of caffeine though their flavors are very similar to the base versions above. At this point, we should also take a moment of silence for the two cold brew flavors, sweet black and nitro latte. The nitro latte was a personal favorite and I quite liked the sweet black,...