Penn Brewery Oktoberfest

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Penn Brewery Oktoberfest is the annual Oktoberfest thrown by Pennsylvania Brewing Company - Penn Brewery to everyone in Pittsburgh - at its historic brewery complex at 800 Vinial Street on the city's North Side, in the old German neighborhood of Deutschtown. The 2026 edition runs over two long weekends, September 18 to 20 and September 25 to 27, with a kickoff party on Thursday, September 17. Fridays and Saturdays run outside from 5 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., and Family Day Sundays run from noon to 7 p.m. inside the restaurant. Admission is free and so is parking. The brewery sums the weekend up in four words on its own poster - beer, food, music, tradition - and Discover the Burgh calls it one of the largest Oktoberfest celebrations in Pittsburgh. VIP tickets are sold for those who want fast stein refills, private restrooms and prime seating.

The beer that gives the party its name is Penn Oktoberfest, a 5.5 percent lager the brewery labels a Munich-style Oktoberfest and describes as a rich, copper-colored Munich-style fest beer, malty and medium-bodied, with nutty, toasty, slightly roasted and caramel characteristics. It pours alongside a separate Penn Marzen at 5.5 percent, malty and copper-red with a full mouthfeel and a slightly sweet caramel character, and the year-round German lineup: Penn Pilsner, a 5.0 percent Vienna lager with caramel, toffee and toasted nutty notes, Penn Gold, a 5.0 percent Munchener Helles, Penn Dark, a 5.0 percent Munchener Dunkel with sweet caramel malt and roasted hints, and Penn Kaiser Pils, a 4.5 percent Northern German pils with a very healthy dose of noble hops. Autumn adds Pumpkin Roll Ale and Nut Roll Ale, winter brings St. Nikolaus Bock at 6.5 percent - 9 percent in the Brewer's Reserve firkin the brewery taps in December - and spring brings the 8.5 percent Penndemonium Maibock. The brewery likes the season enough to throw a Halfway to Oktoberfest party in May as well.

The setting is the reason the festival feels older than it is. Penn Brewery occupies the mid-nineteenth-century landmark E and O Brewery Building, and the site's roots run back to 1848 and the Eberhardt and Ober families, German immigrants who settled in Deutschtown. Three buildings from their era survive inside the present-day complex and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Beneath them runs a labyrinth of stone caves and tunnels dug to chill, or lager, barrels of beer - Penn is one of just a handful of remaining US breweries that still has its lagering caves. The E and O and Ober Bros. breweries merged with a number of other regional breweries to become part of Pittsburgh Brewing Company in 1899, and production on the site continued until 1952. The modern brewery began in 1986 and opened its own brewing operation at the E and O site in 1989, brewing classic lagers and German styles to the standards of the sixteenth-century Bavarian Reinheitsgebot purity law. It calls itself Pittsburgh's oldest brewery, counts twenty Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup medals, and works out of a building Discover the Burgh describes as approaching 170 years old.

The kitchen matches the beer. Penn's restaurant serves what it calls ethnic-Pittsburgh fare - wurst, schnitzel, pierogi and goulash next to contemporary Pittsburgh favorites such as the French fry salad, flatbreads and sandwiches - and the festival advertises authentic German food across both weekends. The brewery lists live music among the weekend's draws, its own site describes the Thursday kickoff as a traditional keg tapping, and the Sunday family sessions move indoors so the party works for people who are not there to close the biergarten at 11:30 p.m. Outside festival weekends the taproom keeps short hours - Thursday and Friday 4 to 8 p.m., Saturday 3 to 8 p.m. and Sunday noon to 4 p.m. - which is worth checking before a shoulder-season visit.

Getting there is cheap by big-festival standards. The address is 800 Vinial Street, Pittsburgh 15212, on the North Side, and unlike most city festivals of this size the event charges nothing at the gate and nothing to park. A separate Penn Brewery location operates at Pittsburgh International Airport, but Oktoberfest belongs to Vinial Street.

This page is the permanent home of the Penn Brewery Oktoberfest on Beer.Social. When the next edition is announced we link the current dates and details here, and past editions are archived below.

Next edition

Penn Brewery's Oktoberfest 2026 — October 1, 2026 – October 15, 2026 hosted by Pennsylvania Brewing Co. Event details and RSVP

Past editions

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