Taste of spring: CC Arts Center holds first Uff Da festival
Community polka musicians provided entertainment as visitors toured sampled food and beer at the Arts Center on Friday. Press photos by Kate Hayden
Jennifer Nance offers tastes of German beers Edelstoff, Ayinger and Maximator to visitors at Friday's UffDa Fruehling Fest at the Charles City Arts Center.
By Kate Hayden, khayden@charlescitypress.com
The Charles City Arts Center kicked off a beautiful spring weekend with a new celebration. This year’s Uff Da Fruehling Spring Fest had around 90 community members walk through the center’s doors for polka music, food, beer and wine samplings.
The festival is a way for community members to celebrate German and Norwegian heritages, and get excited about the warm weather arriving this time of year, director Jacqueline Davidson said.
It was a good opportunity to introduce Charles City residents to some traditional German beers, home brewer Jennifer Nance said. Two of the beers available for sample, the Edelstoff and the Maximator, were imported from Munich’s oldest brewery, Augustiner-Brau, in operation since 1328. Nance also offered the Ayinger for sample.
“They are very traditional German beers that we wanted to bring out to the community today,” Nance said. “I think that other people would like beer a lot more if they got to taste it, and they don’t have to go out and go buy … They can always just come taste it and find out what they like more.”
“If they do like those things, there’s all kinds of resources for them to enjoy more beer. I want to be one of those resources for them, just kind of lead them in the right direction,” Nance added.
Nance started home brewing a year ago, and will participate in Lark Brewing’s homebrew competition in Waterloo on May 6.
“It is an opportunity to talk to people that I normally wouldn’t talk about beer with,” Nance said.
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