Mystique of beer at the Oktoberfest

What’s in a beer? A thirst quencher, a lubricant for social intercourse, a ‘kick’ to forget one’s troubles momentarily, a source of nourishment, or a new gastronomic paradigm as a wine like accompaniment to food?

To its devotees as well as its detractors, beer, which traces its origins to antiquity, can mean many things.

Oktoberfest at the Hilton.

For the average beer drinker and the aficionado alike, the Munich-styled beer festival called Oktoberfest, dedicated to merriment and beer was held last week at the Hilton Colombo Sports Centre Car Park. It ends today.

The public got a taste and a glimpse of the infinite variety and refinement that a brewer with the right mixture of dedication, skill and profit motive can achieve.

The Three Coins Company, Sri Lanka’s only specialty brewer, for the sixth successive year lent its commitment to and expertise in gourmet beer making to this year’s Oktoberfest. The company custom brewed six specialities and four of its regular favourites especially for this year’s festival, with three of the custom brewed specialities being produced for the first time.

The Three Coins offering this year was Oktoberfest Beer, Kolsch, Munich Dunkel (new), Bock (new) Strawberry beer and a new Malt Beverage, details of which are still being kept secret. The company’s regular specialty beers, Three Coins All Malt Lager, Three Coins Riva, Irish Dark and Sando Stout completed the list.

“We have succeeded over the past five years in demonstrating to many beer drinkers that there is much more to beer than lager and stout,” Janaka Jayasinghe, Head of Brewing at Three Coins said. “This is the only opportunity that Sri Lankans get to experience the sheer delight of discovering new varieties of beer in their own country.”