The 15th Annual International Oktoberfest at the Newport Yachting Center will feature lively Bavarian music and dance, plus popular German foods and beers.

timothy john siekiera

Look around for your lederhosen.

The 15th annual International Oktoberfest is this weekend at the Newport Yachting Center, Saturday through Monday, celebrating German everything: culture, clothing, music, food and, of course, beer. In fact, there will be a Biergarten (beer garden) featuring several German brews: Spaten, Paulaner and Warsteiner, to name a few.

“We have much more beer on tap than ever,” says Rebecca Knap, manager of the Oktoberfest. “We have 14 different brews.”

To fully appeal to palates, the festival will also include authentic German foods offered by the Hosbrauhaus restaurant in West Springfield, Mass.

One of the featured foods at the festival will be bratwurst, available in absurd abundance. The German sausages will be cooked on a 65-foot grill, called the Big Taste Grill, which is pulled as part of an 18-wheel tractor-trailer truck. The grill can cook 750 bratwursts at once, and 2,500 in an hour.

About 30,000 people are expected over the three days of the festival. The main attraction is watching Bavarian folk dancing and listening to German music.

Among the featured performers in the festival are Spitze!, a German-American dance show band that uses cow bells, an alp horn and a xylophone, and OK Live , a 19-member band from Wolmirstedt, Germany, presenting not simply music, singing and dancing, but acrobatics.

There will be a family tent with a children’s play area with a Root Biergarten, offering complimentary root beer floats, a petting zoo and activities ranging from making magic with balloons to painting pumpkins. And for those who never saw the movie The Sound of Music, or wished they could see it once more, or, perhaps, several times in a day, and numerous times in a weekend, it will play continuously through the festival.

Those men who can’t find their lederhosen, and those women who can’t find their dirndl dresses, may be able to buy the items at the festival’s marketplace.

“We do encourage everyone to wear costumes,” Knap says. “What other chance will you get to dress like this, especially in Newport?”

Each day, the festival begins at 11 a.m. It closes at 9 p.m. on Saturday, 8 p.m. on Sunday and 6 p.m. on Monday. Admission is $12, and free for children younger than 12 who are accompanied by an adult. For more information, visit www.newportfestivals.com, or call (401) 846-1600. The yachting center is off America’s Cup Avenue.