This story is part of our October 2024 issue. To subscribe, click here.

To spend an afternoon in a Bavarian biergarten, especially for Oktoberfest, is to experience conviviality of the highest order. There are expansive indoor and outdoor spaces with a variety of seating configurations, crisp beers, food options from tempting snacks to hearty meals, and people of all ages, from kinder in short pants to old men in lederhosen.

But you don’t need to fly all the way to Munich to get an authentic Oktoberfest experience, even after October draws to a close. Whether indoors or outdoors, in Sacramento, Rocklin or Elk Grove, this area has many biergartens and other German-style spots to choose from. So break out your stein, dry clean your dirndl and auf geht’s! 

Sacramento’s oldest Oktoberfest

When longtime Sacramentans think “Oktoberfest,” they mostly think “Turn Verein.” I met with Turn Verein Vice President Emily Via in the group’s stately library building to discuss that event and the overall mission and history of the Turner movement in Sacramento. 

Turn Verein, usually written elsewhere as Turnverein, translates loosely into “gymnastic club” and was founded as an athletic and political movement while Germany was under Napoleonic control in the 19th century. The Turners were generally nationalist and liberal, rebelling first against Napoleonic control and later monarchic power.

After their participation in the failed German Revolution of 1848, many Turners fled to the United States and started Turnvereine across the country. The Sacramento Turner organization, founded in 1854, is one of the oldest remaining in the country. The Turn Verein’s Oktoberfest, which started in 1969, is its biggest fundraiser.

Via’s aunt and uncle were “hausmeisters” when she was growing up, which meant they lived in an apartment inside the Turn Verein, so she grew up participating in club activities there. When she turned 40, she decided “It was time for me to put my shoulder to the wheel and make things go,” she says. That includes Oktoberfest, which lasts two days and requires 200 volunteers, in addition to paid security and three professional bands.

During this ticketed event (this year’s takes place Oct. 11), volunteers serve 2,500 dinners, including 1,500 pounds of bratwurst and weisswurst sausages, and pour from 140 kegs. The beer selection, ordered in January, is very traditional, with Oktoberfest beers from German breweries Hofbrau Munchen and Paulaner. “The beer is delicious; it’s fantastic,” Via says. “It’s just how it should be out of the keg.”

Recipes straight from Oma

Another place where you’ll find perfect German pours is Kathrin’s Biergarten in Rocklin, owned by Frankfurt-area native Kathrin Grosse. Grosse is adamant about beer being served properly. “In Germany if you don’t have a head, they give the beer back. They wouldn’t even take it,” she says. “That was a little tricky for my American servers to learn, but they get it, that it’s important to me.”  

Grosse also ensures there is proper glassware for each type of beer and keeps all the food recipes true to their source: her grandmother.

The pretzels, a top-selling item, are made by a German immigrant, and some of her sausages are made by Dirk Müller, the former wurstmeister of the much-missed Morant’s Sausages. For their three Oktoberfest celebrations, they will serve schweinshaxe, a dramatically presented roasted pork knuckle.

Grosse immigrated to the area in 2003 when her husband started working for Hewlett Packard in Roseville. She was not sold initially, but joked, “I promised him to try at least three years in California, and now four kids later, we are still here.” 

Homesick, she started throwing Oktoberfest celebrations at her house, which grew to 100 attendees. “Everybody loved our beer and my food, and I thought I might as well do this professionally,” she says.

So when a large indoor/outdoor space featuring a centerpiece of a mature oak tree, which was formerly home to Black Vinyl Ale Project (a side project of now-defunct Boneshaker Community Brewery) became available in 2017, Grosse pounced. In its seventh year, Kathrin’s serves as a  gathering space for the entire Rocklin community, especially those with a connection to Germany. “They are crying when I talk German to them,” Grosse says. “They like to share their memories and their stories.”

New spaces with old-world vibes

Much newer (opened in summer 2023), and planning their first full-scale Oktoberfest, is Prost Beer Hall in Elk Grove. True to the name, this is a mostly indoor space rather than a beer garden, but what a lovely and historic space it is! 

Married owners and proud King Charles Spaniel parents Dave Smith and Jamie Dougherty also own Pizzasaurus Rex in Midtown and Old Town Pizza and Y-Not Club in Elk Grove. When they first heard the space that became Prost was for sale (vacated by Lola’s Lounge, which has since relocated to Sacramento), Dougherty tried to put her foot down about acquiring any more businesses. But her husband went around her, she says with a laugh. “It was Elk Grove Brewery, one of the first craft breweries in the whole area,” she says. “We used to go there as kids.” 

Smith continues, “It’s the second-oldest building in Elk Grove, a beautiful old building with floors that date to 1890, milled 400 meters away. We stripped everything back and started refreshing everything, and it had that old-world feel like something you’d see in Bavaria.”

They hired chef Matt Tui, formerly of Mulvaney’s B&L and Pangaea Bier Cafe, to put together a menu of traditional German bierhall dishes, but also American ones like burgers; recently, they started serving brunch. Their beer skews slightly less German and more local than Kathrin’s, with Dougherty saying, “We round out the selection with local beers to fill the gaps, like West Coast IPA.”

An equally well-rounded selection can be found two doors down from Dougherty and Smith’s Midtown restaurant, Pizzasaurus Rex, at Der Biergarten. Biergarten owner Sean Derfield is a longtime bar and restaurant owner and a raconteur with too many good stories to relate in this space (including one about a hair-raising collision with a light rail train), but like his friend Kathrin Grosse, he is devoted to German beer and culture. Derfield’s mom immigrated to the U.S. from near Heidelberg in Germany when she was 19, and he grew up going there every few years during his childhood.

In addition to those youthful times in Deutschland, the idea for Der Biergarten came from seeing a beer garden created from a shipping container in San Francisco. Although a few such shipping container businesses have now opened in the area (including The Federalist), he was a pioneer in proposing it in Sacramento in 2014, and he had to jump through a few hoops to get city approval to open in the spot that he said had been vacant for over 13 years.  

Der Biergarten has been thriving for almost a decade and hosted its seventh Midtown Oktoberfest celebration on Sept. 28. Midtown Oktoberfest is a ticketed event that shuts down the block, and Der Biergarten supplements the food cooks can prepare in the tiny, galley-like kitchen with food from neighbor The Golden Bear and also a vendor to feed the 2,500 people who typically attend. 

The biergarten also offers beer from their 27 taps. Derfield’s son Jarrett (who is part owner) chooses 13 or 14 that are German, and the rest are a mix of American beers and ciders. A bartender invented the most viral drink: the Starburst, a mix of Schofferhofer grapefruit hefeweizen topped with Two Rivers pomegranate cider, which is two-toned and Instagram-ready.

Derfield draws a comparison to the vibe he has created at Der Biergarten with the one he remembers from biergartens in Germany, where his cousins would take him to biergartens starting when he was 16. “I loved that you could talk to someone,” he says. “You won’t see many people on the phone; they’re talking to their neighbors. That’s what I love.” 

Subscribe to the Comstock’s newsletter today.