It’s just about October, and we are now in the heart of Oktoberfest. Below is a list of the places celebrating and the events planned. If we are missing anything, please email us. You can also jump directly to the Oktoberfest beers currently listed on BeerMenus here.

Manhattan:

3rd Avenue New York City Oktoberfest Celebration, from 11am-6pm. This occurs on various Fridays and Saturdays throughout October. More details to come.

Zum Schneider has live German music, special food menus, and special Oktoberfest beers on tap. Check here for more details.

Loreley is offering special Oktoberfests beers on tap including currently: Erdinger Oktoberfest Wheat, Hobbrau Oktoberfest, Spaten Oktoberfest, and Schneider Wiesen Edelweisse.

Lederhosen will be offering Oktoberfest specials to go along with their usual great German beer menu.

East Village Tavern will be having an American Oktoberfest with several lines of Oktoberfest-style beers from American breweries.

Heidelberg will be also be offering specials on Oktoberfest beers with live German music as well.

The Village Pourhouse will be having beer and food pairings on October 16th and 18th at 7PM for $40.

August will celebrate Oktoberfest from Monday, September 29th through Sunday, October 5th, when they will be featuring specialty German foods inclduding Sausage & Kraut, Bavarian Pretzels, Braised Veal Cheeks, and Apple Fritters, as well as hearty German Oktoberfest beers.

Brooklyn

The Gate will be hosting an Oktoberfest event with one of the most extensive lineups. Details

Queens:

Astoria’s famed Bohemian Beer Garden will be celebrating Oktoberfest on Saturday October 4th and Sunday October 5th. Entrance fee is $10, Pilsner Brass Band will be playing and the usual German beers will be pouring.

Sunswick, will be offering: Ayinger Oktoberfest, Blue Point Oktoberfest, Flying Dog Dogtoberfest, Stoudts Oktoberfest, Victory Festbeir, Wurzburger Oktoberfest.

On Sunday September 28th, the Diamond will host a competition where six teams try to create the best homebrew and home-cooked dish pairing. These dedicated participants will compete to win a trip to the Stoudt’s Brewing Company Oktoberfest in Adamstown, Pennsylvania. You can pay $20 to sample each of the contestants pairings and vote on the winner. The $20 is donated to East New York Farms, a really great local community organization.

There will be two sessions, an afternoon session from 3-4:30pm and an evening session from 5-6:30pm. Reserve a spot by calling 718-383-5030.

The (amazing) menu:

Team 1: Vices & Virtues. Saison style served w/ arepas w/ apple chutney & sheepsmilk brie
Team 2: Bockstars. Bock-Fiddy w/ Dry rubbed ribs smoked 6 hours
Team 3: Dirty Hands, Clean Conscience. Plain Porter w/ Shepherd’s Stew
Team 4: Esoteric Order of H.P.D. Black Saison w/ Sopes
Team 5: Drunken Butchers. IPA w/ Shrimp
Team 6: The Missing Smiths. European Bock w/ Pumpkin Ravioli

Extra Showcase Beer: Strawberry Double IPA from Ben Granger of Bierkraft

Available starting Wednesday September 24th at 6PM, the brand new Dogfish Head Brewery Beer Theobroma will be available exclusively at the East Village Tavern. The first 25 people to purchase this beer at East Village Tavern will get free Dogfish Head Snifter Glasses. These glasses are the perfect glass for any hop head who wants to capture that dry hop nose on any great IPA. According to DFH, the Theobroma is “based on chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras which revealed the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink used by early civilizations to toast special occasions. The discovery of this beverage pushed back the earliest use of cocoa for human consumption more than 500 years to 1200 BC. As per the analysis, Dogfish Head’s Theobroma (translated into ‘food of the gods’) is brewed with Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs, honey, chilies, and annatto (fragrant tree seeds).”

We are currently seeking an intern to help with everything that is BeerMenus. Jump in and make an immediate impact and gain experience in all things beer and business. If you’re interested, please send your resume and a note on why you’d like to join us to will@beermenus.com The position is unpaid but offers a flexible work schedule, tons of opportunities to network and learn, and exposure to a tremendous variety of great beer.

Limited Quantities of Neighborhood Bar Crawl Tickets Are Still Available!

Some of the events have already sold out, but tickets remain for other days and neighborhoods. So hound your friends to finalize your crawl plans and act quickly!! This great opportunity to get the gang together has not passed yet.

Any of the remaining tickets will be made available, for cash only, at today’s NY Brew Fest. So if you are already planning to head out to South Street Seaport for this great event, make sure you bring some extra cash to secure the crawl tickets of your choice.

Tickets to the neighborhood beer bar crawls are already available for credit card purchase through the website. Click here for details

The crawl tickets will remain available for online purchase until the evening before each event. If you select the “Will-Call” ticket option and purchase before 7pm, your physical tickets will be available for pick up THE FOLLOWING DAY (as long as you purchase before 7PM), and every day thereafter at …

Upper West Side Crawl – Dive Bar
Midtown Crawl – Heartland
West Village Crawl – Chelsea Brewing Company
East Village Crawl – Jimmy’s no. 43
Lower East Side Crawl – Puck Fair
Greenpoint Crawl – The Diamond
Williamsburg Crawl – South 4th Bar & Cafe
Downtown Brooklyn Crawl – Waterfront Ale House
Park Slope Crawl – Beer Table

Each of the above locations will also have any remaining day-of crawl tickets for their respective neighborhoods only. These same day tickets will be available by cash only.

In addition to the great neighborhood beer bar crawls, there are still seatings available at the beer dinners. Click here for details

What You Get With a Crawl Ticket
A ticket to the crawl entitles you to your choice of one 8 oz. serving of Northeastern craft beer at each bar in the neighborhood out of the posted selection here. You may use the ticket at any time of the day the participating bars are open on the specified date of your ticket. Your ticket also guarantees you one of the commemorative event glasses to take home with you at the end of the crawl. Do not feel limited to purchasing only one neighborhood crawl as the more of the city that you can experience, the better.

There are also free copies of our program guide, the NYC BEER PASSPORT available from every bar participating in the crawls.

The New York Brewfest takes place this Friday from 5PM-10PM at the South Street Seaport. Highlights will include a commemorative glass, 300 styles of beer, 4 live bands, all in the open-air seaport setting. Brewfests are tricky events to both organize and participate in, so for this event, we at BeerMenus decided to offer some insight.

To learn more about the logistics involved in the brewfest, I had the pleasure of speaking with David Katleski, president of the New York Brewers Association, the organization responsible for protecting and promoting New York State Breweries and the group that sanctioned the NY Brewfest. David explained that the purpose of the brewfest is to serve as an educational tool to showcase New York state breweries by allowing people to sample beers, many of which are difficult or impossible to get in the City.

Making a brewfest an education tool and not a keg party is a challenge, and in your best interest. David explained that the organizers work hard to get the correct balance of the number of ounces poured in each sample, the number of people present, the number of brewery booths, and the number of kegs/bottles/cans supplied. The idea is to make sure people really sample the beers, pace themselves with consumption, and take full advantage of the variety of beers at the event. This year there will be 3x as many bathrooms as last year and there will also be 3x as many points of entry so it doesn’t take forever to get into the event.

The organizers do their best to create an environment suitable for mature beer sampling, but no matter how experienced you are with brewfests, an all-you-can-drink event with hundreds of beers is difficult to navigate. The organizers do their best to help, but in the end it is on you to make the right choices. From our experience, aside from staying hydrated and eating beforehand, it helps to start with lower ABV beers and beers with more subtle flavor. This way you don’t burn your palate with hops or lose the ability to taste from drunkeness. As much as you will be raring to go with Imperials and Doubles after a long week, you will be kicking yourself if you only remember what 3 beers taste like after paying to be in an all-you-can-drink oasis with 300 beers.

Ticket proceeds go to the NY Brewers Association to protect and promote New York state breweries and as David said, the tickets will definitely sell out, so buy your tickets online here so you don’t miss out.

We created BeerMenus to help people find great beer, and we just caught wind of where you can find the only keg of Dogfish Head Shelter Pale Ale available in NYC. Dogfish Head Shelter Pale Ale, the original Dogfish Head beer, will be pouring at the East Village Tavern from just one keg on Tuesday September 9th starting at 7PM sharp until its gone. Dogfish calls it their most approachable beer… and approachable it is. Brewed with a premium barley and whole-leaf Glacial & Warrior hops, the Shelter Pale has a fine malt backbone with a slightly nutty flavor. Limited availability will make it go fast, so make sure to swing by and try the beer that got it all started for Dogfish Head Brewery.

Once again, a big thank you to the bars that updated their beer menus most often in August. Thank you all for helping the craft beer community in NYC and for making it easier to find great beer. Make sure to check out these bars and thank them…

Spring Lounge

East Village Tavern

Blind Tiger

GRAB Specialty Foods

Wholefoods Bowery

Cherry Tree Bar

The Diamond

Toast

Puck Fair

Westside Brewing Company

Fourth Avenue Pub

David Copperfields

Stanton Public

Back Forty

Third And Long