PA Brewers’ Village Added to Artsquest’s Oktoberfest

In addition to being free, which is awesome, Artsquest is adding a Brewers’ Village and beer tasting to this year’s Oktobertfest.  They’re having tasting sessions, which last 90 minutes, that cost $25 (includes a sampling mug) on October 4^th, 5^th, 11^th, and 12^th.  Each session will have more than 30 different beers from Pennsylvania breweries.  Tastings are limited to 175 people each and each day will have three tasting sessions.

Here’s the breweries:

October 4-5
Appalachian Brewing Company, Harrisburg
Yuengling & Son, Pottsville
The Lion Brewery, Wilkes-Barre
North Country Brewing Company, Slippery Rock
Old Forge Brewing Company, Danville
Ship Bottom Brewery, Wallingford
Stoudt’s Brewing Company, Adamstown
Susquehanna Brewing Company, Pittston
Victory Brewing Company, Downingtown
Weyerbacher Brewing Company, Easton
Yards Brewing Company, Philadelphia

October 11-12
Appalachian Brewing Company, Harrisburg
DG Yuengling & Son, Pottsville
HiJinx Brewing Company, Allentown
The Lion Brewery, Wilkes-Barre
North Country Brewing Company, Slippery Rock
Stoudt’s Brewing Company, Adamstown
Susquehanna Brewing Company, Pittston
Tröegs, Hershey
Weyerbacher Brewing Company, Easton
Yards Brewing Company, Philadelphia

This is definitely a step in the right direction for Oktoberfest.  The celebration in Germany is all about local beer, and to have Yuengling, which is a behemoth beer producer (albeit semi-local) serving only their product during previous years was a bit of a bummer.  We’d also love to see some other Eastern PA breweries like The Brew Works, Funk Brewing, Golden Avalanche, Bullfrog, Spring House, The Vineyard at Hershey, Tired Hands, Vault, Free Will, and Barren Hill join in.

The notion of having 90 minute tasting sessions is also a bad one.  People will want to try everything, and trying to get through 30 samples of beer in 90 minutes isn’t going to end well for anyone.  They should either just have an actual beer festival that lasts a few hours (like every other beer festival), or have the breweries able to serve their beers to anyone of age throughout the entire festival, like the actual Oktoberfest, although there would probably be too many breweries to make that feasible.  Still, despite the format of the tastings, it’s still much better than being relegated to slugging back Yuengling Oktoberfests the entire time.  Additions like this, in addition to the free admission, could make the festival a much larger regional attraction than it has been in years past.