Five-0-Five to honor beer brewing roots with Oktoberfest on Sept. 21
It's that time of year again, when temperatures start to cool, leaves begin to change color and local brewpubs celebrate the annual autumnal celebration that is Oktoberfest — and Fremont's Five-0-Five Brewing Company is embracing its beer-making heritage.
"This year will actually only be our second year of doing Oktoberfest," said Jesse Vitamvas, Five-0-Five's head brewer. "We owe a lot of our brewing roots to the German monasteries and the German folks that were lagering beers and brewing beers in that fashion, years and years and years ago."
Five-0-Five is hosting its Oktoberfest celebration on Saturday, Sept. 21 from noon to 10 p.m. in the taproom and outdoors along Fourth Street, which will be blocked off. There will be "traditional-esque" games like hammerschlagen, in which competitors hammer nails into a block of wood or tree trunk.
"It's a good time," Vitamvas said. "It's one of those games I found out about after college and it's kind of just stuck in my mind, and it's kind of a German-style game."
There will also be a stein-holding challenge, in which participants will be given a liter of "beer or water, we haven't really decided" in a stein that they will then hold out in front of them, arm fully extended, for as long as they can.
"Once it starts dipping, you spill or whatever, you're out," Vitamvas said.
All of the brews on tap on Saturday will be German-style, including a lager and a Munich Dunkel, from Five-0-Five and other local breweries.
And what's a beer festival without grilled meat?
Both Nick's Street Eats and Salt & Pepper BBQ will be on hand to ensure you're not drinking on an empty stomach.
It was only a year and a half ago that Salt & Pepper owners Steve Scigo and Bev Minnis took home $5,000 after winning the 2023 Fremont Creative Collective pitch competition and they've been working hard to expand their business beyond their food truck.
"Cooking out of a truck isn't too easy for 250-pound guys," Scigo said.
The two "blue collar schmucks," as Scigo put it, used their winnings to purchase restaurant equipment and renovate a location for a commissary kitchen.
"Getting into a building was a blessing," Scigo said.
Minnis said that winning the pitch competition allowed them to chase what at the time he thought of as "a pipe dream."
"It kickstarted us to start something that we believed we could do, that we enjoyed," Minnis said.
After initially thinking they were going to be able to start cooking out of their new location back in March, the building had other ideas.
"The building fought back," Scigo said. "It took us 'til the end of August to be to the point where we could be inspected. We ran into 14-inch thick concrete floors, outdated plumbing, outdated electrical, had to build all new walls, all new ceilings, all new plumbing, all new electrical. So, yeah, it was a fight, but again, that $5,000 kind of gave us that shot in the arm, really kind of jolted us, I guess, into biting into the apple, so to speak, and just saying, you know what, we're going to do this. We don't care what it takes or how hard we have to work. We're going to do this."
On Fourth Street outside of Five-0-Five Brewing, Salt & Pepper BBQ will be set up Saturday with a pork roulade "with a secret filling of savory goodness that'll make you want to do a happy dance," according to their flyer for Oktoberfest.
Along with the pork tenderloin, patrons will also be getting a slice of rye bread that they imported from Iceland.
"There's a man that's in Iceland that, he digs a hole in the boiling volcanic sands right on the ocean there with the thermal activity and he buries the bread in a stock pot and lets it go all night and then he pulls it out and it's closer to a honey cake," Scigo said. "It's just something that kind of spoke to me and Bev."
Salt & Pepper BBQ's pork roulade will cost $12 and comes with a slice of that Icelandic rye and a side.
To get into Five-0-Five's taproom, there is a $5 cover charge. Beers are $6 and they will have commemorative half liter steins for sale while supplies last.
