After a long trek for coffee the final day of the National Homebrewers Conference began. I managed to avoid a hangover from club night and made it to a 9 am seminar. Mission accomplished!
My 9 am seminar was Mastering the Art of Hop-Fu by Kelsey McNair. Hop-Fu is a an IPA that has won McNair multiple medals in the National Homebrew Competition, including a habanero version that won this year. He detailed the evolution of this beer and his process in heavy detail of what he does to make a batch of Hop-Fu and considerations for making it for competition. I enjoyed the talk and will be trying out some of his processes to see if they work with my brew system.
My next seminar was Introduction to Experimentation by Denny Conn and Drew Beechum. The talk was an extension from their recently published book Experimental Homebrewing. They focused on the importance to understand that most of the research that is done from homebrewing is not real science and should be treated as such. It is difficult to design true experiments that would stand up to scientific rigor and even more difficult to follow through and truly isolate the variable that you are testing. It is important to experiment to find what works best for you and the way you want to brew. They presented some experiments and methods that you could try for that purpose.
After the break for lunch I skipped the next seminar session and walked around the expo floor. It was nice being able to talk to vendors during a seminar because it was not as crowded and you could actually maneuver in the expo hall. I spent that time comparing some conicals that I really should not buy but will research anyway because stainless.
The final seminar I attended was Blurring the Style Guidelines: Brewing Great, Mixed-Style Beers by Peter Zien of Alesmith. Zien was quick to point out that this talk is not meant to condemn beer styles but rather to encourage brewers to take the guide portion of guidelines to heart and try to make your own path. One method he recommended was to look at the beer styles and find where they are in common and try to play around in the differences to create a new hybrid beer. I enjoyed his talk and it didn’t hurt that they were liberally pouring Alesmith Nut Brown and Speedway Stout.
The conference was capped off with the banquet and awards ceremony for the National Homebrew Competition. People started lining up for the banquet an hour and a half before the doors opened in hopes of getting their preferred table. About 40 minutes before the doors opened word started spreading that they would not be allowing homebrew to be poured in the banquet hall. This was due to California law that requires separation of homebrew and commercial serving areas, but really was not handled well by the AHA. What they didn’t say was that you could have homebrew, but you had to pour it outside and bring it in. However they did not make this announcement until after everyone either opened their beer in line or sent their beer back to their room.
The dinner was excellent and was served with Lagunitas beer. Beef short ribs highlighted the main course and were very tender and delicious. The Lagunitas beer provided with the dinner was good, but a bare minimum of beer was placed on the table for dinner. At tables of sixteen, eight twelve-ounce bottles were provided for each of the first three courses and the dessert course brought three bombers to be split by all sixteen people. Because of this there was no beer left in the room after the first hour and a half of what was supposed to be a four hour event. This is usually the time when people start sharing their homebrew and commercial beers they’ve brought but people were told they couldn’t have anything so the event was essentially dry. This is a beer conference and I consider this a failing on the AHA’s part to adapt to the California law. I don’t think they needed to provide enough beer for everyone to get plastered, but at least think ahead to make sure we can have something in our hands throughout the event.
Overall, the conference was a big success. The seminars were excellent and the nightly events were done well despite outdoor lighting issues and the banquet beer situation. This was my favorite conference since Seattle in 2012. I look forward to Baltimore next year.