NHC 2009 Adventure Part 2: Conference Shenanigans

This is part 2 of our 2009 National Homebrewers Conference trip.  Check out the pre-conference shenanigans here.

You know you’re having a good time when you can’t remember what day it is.

I seriously had to ask several times throughout the week.  And this state wasn’t even alcohol-induced.

We kicked off Thursday (I think it was Thursday anyway) with a trip to Oakland Chinatown for some dim-sum at Legendary Palace.  The conference hotel was only about a block away, which was nice.

You know you’re in the right place for ethnic food when there’s no English menu.  The food was excellent and the price was astonishingly low.

After that we wandered over back over to the conference Hospitality Suite to check out the scene.  The suite is open basically from 8:30am-2am (except on Thursday when it opened at 11:30am) and is manned by rotating clubs pouring homebrew.  There are also a number of merchants present during the day, homebrew shops, equipment/ingredient manufacturers and the like.

The official start of the conference is the Opening Toast and the bulk of each day is comprised of different seminars on a wide range of topics.   Chris Graham and Nathan Smith did a superb job of coordinating the guest speakers.

I was really blown away by the level high level of discussion at each talk.  This is definitely not Brewing 101.  I’m pretty sure there will be at least audio for all of the talks up on the AHA site at some point and you should really try to listen to all of them.

Most of the seminars also featured several beers relevant to the presentation.  Between that and the hospitality suite the liver gets quite a workout.  It would be impossible to list every beer we tasted, so I’m not even going to try.

After dinner, each night features a different social event.  Thursday was Pro-Brewers night, Friday Club night and Saturday the Grand Banquet and awards ceremony.

Pro-Brewers night totally rocked this year.  There were around 50 breweries represented serving their beers festival style.  It’s quite a treat to have the owners and head brewers of some of the most famous breweries in the world there pouring their own beers.

I think the most impressive thing is that all of these “rock-star” brewers are real people.  Nobody was ever too busy to chat or sign a book or take a picture.

It was kind of odd (yet completely awesome) to see your brewing “heroes” wandering around as regular conference attendees.  Most of them were there for the whole weekend too.  They weren’t just in to give their presentation or pour some beer and then jet off.

As if Pro-Brewers night wasn’t mad enough, Friday Club Night was lunacy.

Picture the best beer festival you’ve ever been to, then replace all of the beer with homebrew, throw in some free food at each booth and people dressed up in wacky costumes and you’ll be half-way there.

The sponsors for the event were also raffling off tons of prizes, including 2 MoreBeer brew sculptures.  And there was a live recording of the Sunday Session.

By the way, mad props to Tasty McDole and the cellermen (sounds like a bad ’60s band).  I don’t know how they kept the 500+ kegs of beer organized through out the weekend, but everything ran smoothly as far as I could tell.

Saturday night wrapped up the event with the Grand Banquet and awards ceremony.   The Homebrew Chef Sean Paxton designed and cooked the menu for the evening which featured 3 courses all made with Rogue beers.  Sometimes hotel food for 800 can be a little meh, but Sean and crew did an outstanding job!

Then came the announcement on the location for next year’s conference (more on that in a bit) and the awards from the National competition.  Congrats to everyone that placed.  Just making it to the second round is a huge accomplishment, and to win a medal is a great honor.  The full stats and list of winners is on the AHA site here.  Look closely and you might even see someone you know on the list (Hint: Category 8, First place)…

As if just placing in the competition wasn’t already cool enough, all of the Gold medal winners are going Sierra Nevada for a Beer Camp weekend.  There will be tours and tasting panels and other technical talks.  Then at the end of the weekend the homebrewers will team up to design and brew a recipe with the Sierra Nevada brewers that will be distributed to the winners’ hometowns.

All in all the whole weekend was a huge success.  Huge thanks to the organizers and everyone that worked so hard to make the conference possible.  These people really can’t be thanked enough for their efforts.

The only low point of the week was dealing with the silly airlines.  Of the 4 planes we took to get there and back only 1 was actually on schedule and not oversold.  grrr.  On the bright side no trip to the Bay Area can be complete without drinking some fresh Anchor Steam on draft and we had plenty of time to do just that at the airport bar!

So there you have it.  A brief summary of the most awesomest week in the history of ever.  The conference next year will be in Minneapolis, MN and is guaranteed to be an excellent time, so book your tickets as soon as they go on sale.

I’ll leave you with a few more pictures that will make you supremely jealous and ensure that you sign up for the next conference!

Tagged as: aha, national homebrew conference, nhc