Beyond Oktoberfest: alternative beer festivals in Bavaria

06.09.2024 - 23:05 / lonelyplanet.com

Sep 6, 2024 • 4 min read

Known largely to locals, these beer festivals all over the southern German state are among the biggest and liveliest in Europe in their own right.

No one can deny that Oktoberfest is the king of all beer festivals, attracting over 6 million annual visitors and making a significant contribution to the Munich economy. 

Yet though the festival is epic, today visitor numbers are back to pre-COVID levels, accommodations get booked up a year in advance and a tankard of beer costs over €15. All of which makes the idea of sampling other beer festivals throughout Bavaria increasingly attractive. Known largely to locals, these beer parties might be called the “best of the rest” – though in truth they are some of the biggest and best beer festivals in Europe in their own right.

Dating back to 1812, Straubing’s little-known Gäubodenvolksfest is in fact the second-largest folk (pronounced “beer”) festival in Bavaria after Oktoberfest – and this one has better weather and the occasional free seat. Over 11 days in August, the event attracts well over a million visitors – a mammoth number for an otherwise nondescript town of 50,000 people. That would make it the largest annual beer festival in the vast majority of the world’s beer-drinking nations. 

As at Oktoberfest, there’s a fun fair and other distractions unrelated to the local hop-based beverages – yet it’s the 100,000 sq m (1,076,000 sq ft) of tent space shared between seven local breweries that draw crowds looking to quench their thirst in the August heat. What’s more, the beer costs around three-quarters of what it does at Munich’s better-known lager shebang – reason enough to head to this corner of eastern Bavaria.

While Munich is known primarily for Oktoberfest, few know that the city hosts several other, smaller beer festivals throughout the year. The Starkbierzeit – literally “Time of Strong Beer” – originated in the 17th century, when Paulaner monks brewed strong, nourishing beer called Doppelbock to sustain themselves while fasting during Lent. 

Still held in the run-up to Easter, this most pious of alcohol-based “fasts” isn’t held in at a single site, instead playing out at various breweries and taverns across the Bavarian capital. It’s also an evening thing, so forget those beer-and-chicken breakfasts of the Oktoberfest meadow. While the main dispensary remains the Nockherberg, where the whole thing started, many others get in on the act, brewing a serving special lager with an almost wine-like 7.5% alcohol content.

Joined at the hip with Munich, the town of Dachau is normally associated with the darkest days of the Nazis. But once a year the community puts all of its historical associations to one side to party. The Dachau Folk