An Oktoberfest without the hangover is coming to Evanston. Chicago AF, the nonprofit behind a growing roster of alcohol-free social events, is bringing its Mocktoberfest festival to The Palmhouse at 619 Howard St. on Saturday, Oct. 10, with unlimited 3-ounce samples of nonalcoholic beer, zero-proof cocktails and teas standing in for the usual steins of lager.
According to the event page, Mocktoberfest is built around great NA drinks, playful energy and a crowd that is there to actually connect, rather than just drink. Organizers describe it as an Oktoberfest-style event celebrating nonalcoholic drinks, and as reported by the Chicago Tribune, the festival hopes to offer a fun alternative to activities centered on drinking — one that could draw college students from nearby Northwestern and Loyola along with longtime Chicago AF members. Tickets, priced around $39.19, are available through Chicago AF's website.
The festival will fill both indoor and outdoor spaces at The Palmhouse with German-style festival seating and decor, a local vendor market, games and contests, roaming performers and a photo booth. Live music will carry rock and pop energy with just enough polka mixed in to keep things festive, per Chicago's North Shore CVB, which also notes the event will include talks on German culture alongside a German-themed menu of food available for purchase. The Tribune reports the event is scheduled to run from noon to 4 p.m., though an Eventbrite listing for the same date gives differing hours that were not independently confirmed.
Who's Pouring the NA Beer
Beverage sampling will come from a lineup that includes Go Brewing, Years, Athletic, Gruvi and Revolution Brewing, according to Chicago AF's own event listing. Go Brewing, based in Naperville, will offer Oktoberfest-style nonalcoholic beers, the Tribune reports, as will Best Day Brewing, a California-based company also pouring samples that day. Some of the beverages served may contain less than 0.5% ABV, per the same Chicago AF listing.
Years will bring its Original Pilsner, Classic Pale and Belgian Wit for sampling, according to the Tribune's reporting.
From Living Room Idea to 1,800-Member Nonprofit
Chicago AF was founded in October 2020 by Carrie May, of Arlington Heights, as a social group for adults to make connections — not, she has emphasized, a support group for people pursuing sobriety. As reported by the Daily Herald, the group has built a membership of about 1,800 nondrinkers across the city and suburbs.
The Daily Herald notes the organization's first two NA Day events sold out at 200 tickets the first year and 400 the second, evidence of swelling demand for Chicago AF's programming. The group also hosted Oksoberfest at Lincoln Park Zoo for two years, an adults-only, nonalcoholic spin on Oktoberfest that, per the zoo's own event page, offered more than 60 nonalcoholic beers, wines and craft cocktails with admission. The zoo's own event page describes traditional foods like wurst and jumbo soft pretzels alongside the zero-proof pours.
A Market Growing Fast Nationwide
Mocktoberfest's timing tracks with a broader shift in what Americans are drinking. Nonalcoholic beer is on track to overtake ale as the world's second-largest beer category by volume this year, according to industry tracker IWSR, cited by CNBC, after worldwide nonalcoholic beer volume grew 9% in 2024. IWSR projects no-alcohol beer volume will keep climbing 8% annually through 2029 while ale volume slides 2% a year over the same stretch.
In the U.S. specifically, the no-alcohol market is forecast to grow at an 18% volume compound annual growth rate from 2024 to 2028 and could be worth close to $5 billion by the end of that period, according to IWSR's own research, which identifies nonalcoholic beer as the primary volume driver and finds that limiting alcohol intake and health concerns are the dominant reasons consumers are making the switch. Nonalcoholic beer, wine and spirits generated $925 million in off-premise sales last year and grew 22% year over year, per a separate report from NielsenIQ. Against that backdrop, a festival built entirely around zero-proof pours in Evanston looks less like a novelty and more like a bet on where drinking culture is headed.
