Central Texas's biggest names in barbecue are lining up to hand out sausage samples at Scholz Garten this fall, when the Austin Saengerrunde throws its annual Austoberfest at the 1607 San Jacinto Blvd tavern. General admission tickets run $40, climbing to $55 after September 26, while $100 VIP passes unlock a rooftop patio, dedicated restrooms and an air-conditioned lounge with refreshments. The first 500 guests through the gate walk away with a free half-liter stein, and the whole event remains subject to change due to weather or other concerns.
The sausage sampling competition is shaping up as one of the festival's biggest draws, with scheduled vendors including Micklethwait Barbecue, la Barbecue, Southside Market & Barbecue, The Original Black's Barbecue, Distant Relatives and Easy Tiger, according to Do512. Beyond the food, Austoberfest offers $5 specials on select draft beers, kids' activities from noon to 4 p.m., and access to Scholz Garten's historic bowling lanes. As CultureMap Austin reports, the live music lineup features DJ Vegan Leather, Sour Bridges and Off the Grid, with Two Tons of Steel headlining the night.
A Steinholding Path to Cincinnati
Guests can compete in steinholding contests throughout the day, and this year's winners will do more than earn bragging rights. Per the U.S. Steinholding Association, Austoberfest's steinholding contests qualify competitors for the 2026 Texas Steinholding State Championship Finals, scheduled for November 15 at Wurstfest in New Braunfels, where state champions then move on to the U.S. Steinholding Association National Championship in Cincinnati.
Two Tons of Steel, the headlining act, brings its own decades-long backstory to the bill. The band formed in San Antonio in the 1990s under the name Dead Crickets before renaming itself in 1996 after lead singer Kevin Geil's 1956 Cadillac, according to the Texas Country Music Association, which named the group its 2024 Roots/Alternative Group of the Year. The band has also won Best Country Band from the San Antonio Current ten times.
Texas's Oldest Tavern Sets the Scene
Scholz Garten has hosted gatherings on this property since August 1, 1866, when German immigrant and Civil War veteran August Scholz opened it, earning its standing as Texas's oldest continuously operated tavern and beer garden, per Wikipedia. The site was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1967 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The Austin Saengerrunde, a German singing society founded February 8, 1879, bought the property in 1908 and installed the six-lane bowling alley, or kegeln, that festivalgoers can still use today — one of the oldest continuously operating bowling centers in the country, according to the Austin Saengerrunde.
Hoodline covered the Saengerrunde Hall's performance history in an eclipse-inspired premiere at the same San Jacinto Boulevard address last month, noting the same 1879 founding and 1866 tavern origins that anchor Austoberfest's setting.
Politics, Prohibition and a Century of Survival
Scholz Garten's location, wedged between the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas campus, gave it a famously bipartisan reputation over the decades: liberal figures gathered outdoors in the biergarten while conservative figures met inside the dining room, according to Texas Highways. The tavern also weathered Prohibition in the 1920s and early 1930s by expanding its food menu and serving an alcohol-free draught drink marketed as Bone Dry Beer, per Texas Time Travel.
The Austin Saengerrunde has owned the property for more than 110 years but leases the tavern and restaurant operations to private managers, a structure that lets it keep running German choral rehearsals and bowling leagues alongside large public events like Austoberfest. Hospitality veteran Daniel Northcutt took over managing Scholz Garten in 2017 after winning a competitive bidding process among 30 proposals, Texas Highways reported. That same public-facing side of the business has also cashed in on Austin's sports scene, as Hoodline previously reported when Scholz Garten and Crown & Anchor Pub saw a revenue rush during Longhorns football season.
Austoberfest launched in 2013 as an annual Austin Saengerrunde festival, originally partnering with the culinary nonprofit Foodways Texas to spotlight regional craft sausage makers and German brewing traditions, according to the Austin Chronicle. More than a decade later, that founding mission still shapes the festival, from the barbecue sausage sampling to the steinholding qualifiers now feeding into a statewide and national competitive circuit.
