“Probably true,” says John Gurda. I asked the foremost historian of Milwaukee if there are many more Oktoberfests in town now than 50 years ago. Possibly, we concluded, there weren’t any Oktoberfests around here in those days.
It’s surprising in the City of Beer, but here’s a history lesson: The original Oktoberfest has been held in Munich since 1811, but at least until the middle of the last century—the age before cheap tourism—Bavarians were the main attendees. A significant percentage of the Germans who emigrated to Wisconsin in the 19th century came from Bavaria, but Gurda has found no references to any celebrations of Oktoberfest in Milwaukee in those years. Instead, the Bavarians partied at the other side of summer, observing Maifest (Mayfest) in spring.
Regardless of how Milwaukee Germans honored their favorite drink, those immigrants changed the face of America’s alcohol consumption. In the first century of the United States, whisky was the favorite libation, but, Gurda says, “a federal whisky tax pushed the Yankees to beer. Beer ceased to be purely German and became an American beverage.” And Milwaukee was America’s beer capital until the major breweries began to sell yellow water instead of beer. By the start of the 1980s, many of them closed shop.
Likely, the proliferation of Oktoberfests is linked to the spread of craft brewing, which began in Milwaukee in the ’80s with Sprecher and Lakefront and led to the revival of another lost tradition, the beer garden. “It’s reclaiming our heritage—beer gardens, the craft beer wave,” Gurda says. “As beer gets better, people [and brewmeisters] are looking for different markers and ways of competing for attention.”
This article is part of our 2019 Fall Drink Guide. Read the rest of the guide here.
