This past Saturday, Jimmy and I took full advantage of us both having the weekend off and spent the later half of our day at the 2014 Charlotte Oktoberfest. After sleeping in and cooking a paleo pumpkin breakfast together {which Jimmy thought was delicious…post about that later}, we got ready and headed down to the NC Music Factory area {right outside of uptown}.
See what I mean? B-e-a-utiful! It has been overcast here for literally 8+ days straight, even yesterday, but thank goodness Saturday was gorgeous.
The event was sold out, but the venue was so huge that you couldn’t even tell. The lines weren’t ridiculously long and at no point did I feel like a sardine {if a sardine was ever in line waiting for a beer}. As I’ve said before about myself, I try to eat paleo, but I enjoy a good craft beer. Oktoberfest = Not Paleo.
Our little souvenier cups! {w/ a dark, sour cherry beer…pretty good!}
The entire festival was sponsored by Lagunitas Brewery {one of Jimmy’s all time favs}, but there were so many great breweries present, I wish I could give you guys a rundown on them all. I tried taking a few notes here and there, but I got a little sidetracked. Of course, we’re always excited to see Bluepoint Brewery show up. This is a delicious brewery local to Long Island, NY. It’s actually made in the town over from where Jimmy grew up!
We visited this stand more than a few times, of course everything was delicious {love their Toasted Lager, Hoptical Illusion, and their pumpkin beer}. Here’s Jimmy with his brewery. He didn’t know I was taking this picture.
They also had a variety of food trucks on hand for all of us Oktoberfester’s {that’s a word}. We decided to go with the Boone’s BBQ truck. Put a good Carolina BBQ sandwich in front of this girl…game over. It was perfect.
Speaking of food at Oktoberfest, while we were walking in/walking around, Jimmy and I kept noticing all of these people with crazy pretzel necklaces. They were all different shapes and sizes {both ribbons and pretzels} and all day we were wondering, where do you get these things from? Is there a stand where you order and make your own necklace? Why are there so many different styles?! After taking our first lap around the festival we were stumped. We saw no sign of a pretzel necklace stand. Then some random {but friendly} guy came up to us with a store bought Snyder’s bag and offered us his pretzels. He then informed us that “everyone knows to make and bring their own pretzel necklaces”. Duly noted, sir. We looked like total Oktoberfest rookies. Oh well, we will just have to just make our own next year. 😉
These are the pretzels that we were offered.
Overall, it was a great time had by all, and definitely something I plan on revisiting next year. It was my first Oktoberfest/beer festival period, so I’m interested:
What/when/where are some of your favorite beer festivals?
Did anyone go to the CLT Oktoberfest this weekend? Who were some of your favorite vendors?
Tags: Charlotte, oktoberfest, beer, craft beer, weekend, date, local
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