Des Moines will be the place to be this Saturday as Lua Brewing will be celebrating Oktoberfest with a parking lot party! Plenty of delicious food, activities, and of course beer awaits you! Here’s more info courtesy of Lua’s FACEBOOK page!

Join us on Saturday, September 17 for our biggest event of the year: Lua’s 2nd Annual Oktoberfest Celebration. We’re releasing TWO Oktoberfest-style beers, bringing in authentic German 1 liter tankards, and throwing a huge party to mark the occasion in true München style.
We’re converting our entire parking lot into a huge Oktoberfest tent, bringing in a stage with awesome live bands, and releasing authentic Oktoberfest food and beer, along with much more. This is Lua’s largest event of the year. Read on for more details!

TICKETS
Presale tickets are available at https://www.toasttab.com/lua-brewing-company/v3. Tickets are $18 and include admission to the event, a take-home Lua-branded 1 liter authentic German tankard (the same style and brand used in Munich), a full 1L fill of either festival beer, and discounted beer refills.
Admission only tickets are available for $5. Day-of tickets will be $22.
Kids 12 & under are free.
We will not mail physical tickets; ticket purchasers will be placed on a entry list and can arrive at any time on September 17.

EVENTS/ACTIVITIES
-Munich-style Oktoberfest tent
-Two Oktoberfest-Style Beers
-Full tap list of contemporary Lua beers
-Authentic Munich-Style Food from Chef James and Friends
-Live Music courtesy of Some Friends – noon-3pm and Kick! starts at 7pm
-Family Hours 11am-2pm – face painting, balloon animals, henna, and airbrush tattoos
-BAGS TOURNEY – email pete@luabeer.com to sign up
-Sausage Toss Contest
-German Patio Drinking Games including stein holding contest for men and women and STUMP (hammer-nail)
-Prizes for best dressed Oktoberfest patrons
-Commemorative 1 Liter German Tankard to keep

FOOD
-Bratwursts (we partnered with our friends at Old Station Craft Meats to make authentic bratwursts featuring Lua’s Märzen)
-House Schnitzel
-Bavarian Pretzels with mustard and cheese
-Spaetzle and Cabbage

BEERS
Our regular taplist will be available, but the stars of the show will be our two beers for the Fest: a Märzen and a Festbier. While often confused, they are in fact two distinct German styles, both with fascinating histories.

Märzen is the amber-hued Oktoberfest lager most often made in the USA for Oktoberfest celebrations. But did you know that Märzen is not the style served at the actual Oktoberfest in Munich?
Rather, the authentic Oktoberfest beer now served in Germany is called Festbier, a pale (golden), flavorful lager.
It’s true. It’s also complicated. Märzen indeed was the traditional beer served at Munich’s autumnal celebration starting with the first celebration involving alcohol in 1818. At that time, the style most closely resembled a dunkel, deep brown to black in color with roasted characteristics. Today’s lighter, amber Märzen began to appear in the mid-19th century as technological advances made lighter colored (“pale”) malt possible. This new amber-style Märzen took the festival by storm. It was the preferred Oktoberfest lager until the 1970s when Paulaner, one of the six traditional Munich breweries (the others being Spaten, Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräu, and Löwenbräu) began offering a golden lager that it believed would appeal to Germans’ increasing favoritism toward paler beer. This style, later dubbed “Festbier,” was an immediate hit, and by the 1990s, Festbier had become *the* authentic Oktoberfest bier.

Ironically, America’s continuing association of Märzens with Oktoberfest is one of the few instances where American beer norms are perhaps more traditional than our German counterparts.

Lua’s devotion to authenticity in European drinking traditions made our brewing an authentic Festbier an inevitability. But no American Oktoberfest celebration is complete without the amber-hued Märzen that traditionally marks the coming of autumn in the Americas. So to celebrate the right way, we made both. Like all of our continental-style beers, expect unparalleled and painstaking attention to detail and authenticity in the creation and presentation of these classic lager styles.

Oliver’s Oktoberfest (5.7%) is an amber Märzen-style lager brewed with 100% German malts, hops, and yeast. A five-step mash complete with a decoction resulted in a beer that drinks super clean with low bitterness and classic notes of toasted cracker and caramel maltiness.
Festbier (5.2%) was brewed in collaboration with our friends and fellow German-loving lagerheads at Confluence Brewing. Festbier is similar to Oliver’s in that it uses 100% German ingredients and a five step, single decoction mash. Festbier, however, is golden in color and features lighter flavor notes of rich biscuity malt.

Come try both authentic Oktoberfest-style beers and see which you prefer!

GLASSWARE
A regular admission ticket ($18 in advance, $22 at the door if available) gets you in plus a 1 Liter Oliver’s Oktoberfest branded mug and a 1 Liter (33.8 ounce) pour of your choice of Märzen or Festbier.

Why 1 Liter? Because liters traditionally are the only size served at Oktoberfest. Want less than a liter of lager? In Munich, you’d order a Radler/Shandy, which is a full liter of half beer and half lemonade or soda. Both will be available!

In addition to traditional Oktoberfest beers and pour sizes, our regular beers and sizes will be available.

BOTTOM LINE
Come eat, drink, and party like a German all day on September 18 at Historic Sherman Hill’s oldest craft brewery.