Brew Review - Spaten Optimator

I got a tip from one of my relatives back in Michigan about this beer and found one in my local store. It's called the Spaten Optimator. This is a classic imported German Doppelbock. A nice dark lager from the Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu brewery in Munich, Germany and belongs to the InBev family. To my knowledge, this is the first doppelbock that I've tried but after tasting it I could swear I've had this before. This beer comes in a 16.9 oz gold foil covered brown bottle. Best of all, they are sold individually for a very low price, so it was well worth a try.

This doppelbock pours a dark brown color with faint red highlights around the edges of the glass. This beer got a nice thick tan head that quickly melted down to nearly no bead. This beer has a sweet aroma, almost like spice bread. You can faintly smell the German hops but what you really smell is the rich malts that this brew contains. The mouth feel is very creamy and is carbonated just right. The malts hit you up front and last through to the swallow. There are a lot of malts in this beer. It's mostly caramel malt that you taste. I don't detect anything roastier than that. This beer is not bitter in the least. It's sweet but with just enough hops to balance it out. I don't know the IBU rating but I'd guess it's fairly low. Being a doppelbock, it's alcohol content is slightly higher than regular lagers at 7.2% ABV. This beer drinks well and I'd have no problem having more than 1 bottle of this.

This Spaten beer got decent ratings by the beer ranking sites. Beeradvocate gave is a B+ while Ratebeer put it in the 92nd percentile overall and a 3.67/5 ranking. I can see why my relatives back home recommended this beer. They've been to Germany on several occasions and know a good German beer when they taste one. Zum Wohlsein! I really enjoyed this beer and would recommend it to anyone who wants to try a good German Doppelbock. I'll give this beer a nice 3.6 out of 5 rating. Now I wish I had picked up a couple more of these.