Raleigh's Lafayette Village celebrates Oktoberfest

LOCAL FEATURE

By Dathan Kazsuk | Sep 20, 2014

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If I lived in Germany, it would be time to put on the Lederhosen, dust off the porcelain beer stein, head to Munich and consume as much German Oktoberfest beer as possible.

But since I’m here in Raleigh and down the road from Lafayette Village, Jen and I took time out of our busy schedule to check out our first Oktoberfest of the year – which also featured wiener dog races!

It was Lafayette Village’s Oktoberfest, and many of its merchants took part in the festivities, with a majority of the fun taking place in the quad around the shops. Crafty Beer Shop was outside serving up pints of Southern Tier’s Pumking and Worlock as well as a few others. In my opinion, $6.99 a glass was a little steep for beer, but it did beat having to stand in line to purchase tickets to buy my beer elsewhere.

Many people came out to view the wiener dog races 
at Lafayette Village.

I mentioned tickets. Yes, tickets. From what I saw, people were standing in line to purchase tickets to buy beer outside of the Village Grill – which featured beers courtesy of Aviator Brewing and Triangle Brewing Co. There also appeared to be a place to purchase brats and kraut as well. Driftwood Southern Kitchen, which we love, had a table set up outside selling Moonshine Lemonade for anyone looking for something a tad stronger than beer. Thinking back on that day, I should have tried one of those!

Other shops had samples available, such as Savory Spice, which had a spicy mustard available to taste. We also stopped in Novel Tea and tried a couple samples of tea – two of which infused hard apple cider and a pumpkin beer. Nice! I also found some loose leaf tea which might go well in an upcoming beer recipe I’m working on next.

Crafty Beer was in the spirt, serving up several 
pumpkin-style beers.

Wiener dogs! Yes! I forgot about them. So, one of the main reasons for coming to Oktoberfest, in Jen’s opinion, was for the races. We only stuck around for a couple races, but it was pretty entertaining watching these hot-dogs with legs race against one another. Some had no idea what they were doing, while others like Tar Heel, ran straight down the course and actually was the winner of that wiener dog division. Way to go Tar Heel.