Urban Chestnut Brewing Company’s (UCBC’s) tenth annual Oktoberfest St. Louis is returning in 2020. Pandemically-dubbed as “Oktoberfest-lite”, the annual celebration will be conducted as four socially distanced, capacity-limited “trips to Bavaria” this fall! Starting Sept. 19th and running through Oct. 10th, St. Louisians will have four (4) opportunities to experience an outdoor, Munich-style, Oktoberfest experience at UCBC’s Midtown Biergarten in Grand Center.
“Last year’s Oktoberfest St. Louis was our largest festival in UCBC history, with well over 30,000 attendees,” said David Wolfe, co-founder UCBC. “This year’s festival will look a lot different, and be much, much smaller. However, it will be no less authentic. It’s such an important annual celebration of our brewery’s history and identity, so I’m really glad we could put together a plan that will allow us to host a variation of Oktoberfest St. Louis with a safety-first approach for our guests and for our staff.”
All four Oktoberfest-lite’s will be held entirely outside and will feature live music, German food, and of course, German bier. To keep capacity limited and promote social distancing, there will be a maximum of seventeen (17) tables available for advance purchase/reservation per event. Groups of four (4), six (6), or eight (8) people can purchase a private, socially distanced table, and each table will include one (1) commemorative 1-Liter glass Stein, one (1) 1-Liter fill of bier, and a one (1) German bratwurst platter per person.
Each “trip to Bavaria” begins when the Biergarten gates open and the bier starts flowing at 5pm. Traditional German fare will be provided, and live German music will be featured from 6pm until 10pm. O-Katz Oktoberfest Lager, Zwickel Bavarian Lager, and Schnickelfritz Bavarian Weissbier will be available in 16-ounce and 1 Liter pours. UCBC’s Big Shark Lemon and Big Shark Grapefruit Radlers will be available in 16-ounce cans, and their Urban Seltzer Hard Seltzers will be available in 12-ounce cans. One (1) traditional German platter, per person, will be included with each table reservation. Platters include a bratwurst with homemade sauerkraut, potato salad, pretzel, and mustard.
“Our Oktoberfest celebration always gives me a way to bring a bit of my homeland to St. Louis, and this year will no exception. The table reservation model is very similar to how Munich organizes their Oktoberfest,” said Florian Kuplent, co-founder and Brewmaster UCBC. “This year’s scale also reminds me of our very first Oktoberfest St. Louis that we hosted at the Biergarten back in 2011…little, yet traditional.”