Took the family to this Oktoberfest while visiting Durango to photograph the leaves. We visited on Saturday and the weather was perfect. The festival was from 11 am to 4 pm on Saturday, October 8 and from 11 am to 3 pm on Sunday. Entry fee was $5 and then you buy tokens for beer and/or food. Beer tokens were $4 for 1 token=1 beer, and food tokens were $1 for 1 token, but most food were 5 tokens (including 16 ounces lemonade we bought for our son from Tom Cat's Lemonade). We even met a couple I knew from Albuquerque dressed in Victorian garb (see picture).
Breweries included Ska, Steamworks, Brew Pub and Kitchen, Carver Brewing, Animas Brewing, and Durango Brewing. We skipped Ska, since we had visited their brew pub the night before (reviewed in a separate review). We sampled 16 ounce beers from Carver (Lightner Creek Lager, Silver Medal at GABF) this one was my favorite, Brew Pub and Kitchen (Octoberfest, my wife's favorite), Animas Brewing (Hogs Back Black, no real malt or hops flavor), and Steamworks (3rd eye IPA, which was pretty hoppy and my second favorite beer).
The music was pretty good with lots of folks dancing. The headliner was an all white hip hop band called Diabolical Sound Platoon and they were pretty good. There was a huge shaded tent to eat and drink under and we had no trouble finding a seat. Luckily, we had eaten at Oscar's Cafe before coming here. There was really only one food vendor selling bratwurst and dogs and the line never ended there. I think they need to add more food vendors next year.
There were plenty of booths of local vendors and artists, including three or four medical marijuana places, a guitar string jewelry artist, renewal by anderson windows, wine barrel artist, escape room, and an apple cider vendor, just to name a few. There were a few games: beer pong, and a bean bag toss.
We had lots of fun for sure. The best part were the proceeds going to Sexual Assault Services Organization of Durango. read more