Beer Festivals

The region’s largest beer festival takes place every autumn on Stuttgart’s Cannstatter Wasen, where the bands play and the beer flows for two fun-filled weeks. Those looking for a more relaxed, leisurely beer experience are welcome to celebrate one of the many village brewery festivals – complete with traditional music and keg-tapping ceremonies, of course! Who could have guessed what a small agricultural exhibition would one day become? First established by the king to help local farmers after the devastatingly poor harvest of 1816, this event – which welcomed a modest 30,000 people in its first year – has grown to attract almost four million guests every year to what is now the second largest beer festival in Germany.

But this is just one of the region’s many beer festivals. Practically every larger brewery celebrates with their guests at least once a year; from Distelhäuser in Tauberbischofsheim and the Ulrichsfest in Ehingen to the Historic Beer Festival in Zwiefalten or the Ganter Oktoberfest in Freiburg, every single one of these events counts as one of biggest event highlights in their area.

This is now more true than ever since they no longer stick to serving a single festival beer. At today’s beer festivals, classic export beer is joined by refreshing, unfiltered wheat beer. Some festivals are even held especially for the ladies, like the Fischer’s Brewery Festival in Mössingen held in honor of Mother’s Day.