National Homebrewers Conference 2012

This year I attended the National Homebrewers Conference for the first time.  It was a great experience.  I learned a lot, drank a lot and had a whole bunch of fun.

The committee for this year's conference did a great job bringing in speakers.  Here were some of the highlights for me:

• Jennifer Talley from Redhook had a great talk about the history of session beers and what to consider when designing a recipe for a session beer.
• Neva Parker from White Labs did a yeast discussion around the myths of yeast and fermentation.  Yeast is a topic I want to dig more into especially after some of the things that were presented in this talk.
• Going Pro Panel with Dick Cantwell of Elysian, Jamil Zainasheff of Heretic, Beaux Bowman of Black Raven and Jeff Althouse of Oakshire Brewing.  Every homebrewer entertains thoughts of going pro at some point and these guys opened up about the troubles and triumphs they experienced when starting their own breweries.

There were a number of other talks that were excellent.  If you are an American Homebrewers Association member I believe you will be able to listen to the talks at some point.  They should be up on the AHA website by the end of July.

Pro Brewers Night was almost overwhelming.  There were so many beers to try and not enough time or liver strength to get to them all.  I had everything from great beers (Chuckanut Vienna Lager) to not so great beers (Garlic Chile Wheat Beer).  Chuckanut and Black Raven had the longest lines throughout the night.  Sandwiched between them and hidden by the long lines was Brickyard Brewing.  This was too bad for whoever didn't make it there because they were pouring a pretty good oatmeal stout.

If Pro Brewers night was almost overwhelming, Club Night was just insane.  Clubs from all over the country (although predominantly from Washington state) set up to pour hundreds of beers.  My own club, the Impaling Alers, had three beers end up being the part of the best of the conference beers pouring after the banquet on Sunday.  During my shift to serve we got to serve none other than Charlie Papazian himself.  The beers I had that night ranged from great to mediocre, but I can honestly say I had some of the best of the night at our own booth.

The Grand Banquet and Awards Ceremony featured an excellent meal by the Homebrew Chef, Sean Paxton, that was paired with Rogue beers.  When we first arrived we had the Chatoe Rogue Single Malt Ale to get us started.  The first course was a wild mushroom bisque paired with Rogue Mocha Porter.  Even the people at the table that didn't like mushrooms enjoyed this dish.  When we were done with the mushroom bisque they brought us salmon brined in Cap'n Sig's Northwestern Ale, roasted root vegetable mash infused with Hazelnut Brown Nectar and seasonal vegetables sauteed in a Centennial hop butter.  This was paired with the Chatoe Rogue OREgasmic Ale.  For dessert we had a coffee and doughnuts trifle paired with Rogue XS Old Crustacean.  The dinner was magnificent (as expected from Mr. Paxton).

Following dinner was the awards ceremony which I am going to gloss over and just mention that the Homebrewer of the Year was an Impaling Aler!  Congratulations to Jonathan Permen for winning Homebrewer of the Year!

Overall, the conference was great and I will be trying to return as often as I can.  The people were great and I just had a blast.  See you next year in Philadelphia!