About the Festival
Learn more about the Elberta German Sausage Festival.
The Elberta German Sausage Festival began in 1978 as an event to bring the community together and to raise funds for the town. Today, the proceeds primarily go to the Town of Elberta Volunteer Fire Department. The original secret recipe for Elberta's famous sausage is credited to Alfred "Pop" Stucki who managed Elberta's Locker Plant from 1953 until his death in 1973.
After the closure of the Elberta Locker Plant, the sausage-making task fell to Farm Fresh Meats in Robertsdale, AL.
Our current recipe was developed by Farm Fresh, but is based on the original recipe. Farm Fresh has been producing the sausage for our event for over 40 years! While our recipe is a secret, the basis for it is quite simple - premium cuts of pork shoulder and beef chuck clods, as well as various old-world spices made into an 8 inch sausage. That's it! We also use all-natural casings for our sausage.
One ingredient you will not find in our sausage are any preservatives. Our sausage is packed and bagged 2 days before each festival, so it is always fresh and never frozen!
For each festival, we grill approximately 6,000 lbs of our Elberta German Sausage on a 40 ft. long grill. The sausages are loaded into racks which allows us to flip and move a large amount of sausages at one time. They slowly make their way down the grill to the unloading area, where they are transferred to containers that are taken inside of our serving building. There, the sausages are put into buns and wrapped, then taken to serving windows to be enjoyed by our patrons!
The festival also features nearly 200 arts and crafts vendor booth spaces, as well as various non-profit organization booth spaces. If you're not a fan of sausage, that's okay - we have numerous food vendors in attendance that sell items such as roasted corn, typical carnival fare, BBQ, kettle corn, and various other dishes. We also have a bounce house area for the kids!