The 2010 National Homebrewers Conference is a scant 3 months away.  If you haven’t registered yet – what ‘s the holdup?  Last year’s conference was pretty spectacular and this year’s event in Minneapolis promises to be even better.

Bring your liver; the party starts Wednesday (June 16) with pre-conference activities including some pub crawls, brewery tours and a baseball game at the new Twins stadium.  Sign up for one (or more) of them here.

If you want to arrive earlier, stay later, or bring the whole family and make it a vacation – the conference organizers have put together a site with lots of information about the area and extra-curricular activities.  Check it out at mnchillin.com.

Conference packages will start selling out soon and the discounted rate for early registration ends March 31.   It’s 3 days of the best beer and people you could ever wish for.  Pro-Brewers night puts all other festivals to shame.  Club night features some of the best homebrew in the country.  And be sure to get in on the multi-course beer dinner – the Grand Banquet featuring the food stylings of Sean Paxton.

As if all of that wasn’t enough – the conference also includes the second round of the  National Homebrew Competition.  The entry deadline is April 1 and the beer must arrive at the judging site by that date.

So what are you waiting for?  Get on over to the official page and sign up already.

Photo borrowed from the AHA.

Some people have poo-poo’d the whole idea of an internet beer tasting as being rather anti-social.  Sitting behind the keyboard rather than in front of the bar.  Conversing with a bunch of virtual strangers 140 characters at a time.  Seems a little counter to the social nature of beer.

I kind of see the point.  But then again, in an hour and a half stretch I made more than a dozen new friends that I can now interact with daily.  Don’t think I’ve ever done that sitting at an actual bar.

So what the heck a TwitterTasteLive?  Basically it’s an extension of the Twitter service which lets users post short messages on whatever topics happen to be relevant to them.  In this case, beer (or wine or cigars)!

The organizers will post a time/date and a list of beers to be tasted at the event.  Anyone interested in joining in the fun can buy the some or all of the beers on the menu ahead of time.  On the night of the tasting, login to the site at the scheduled time and post your thoughts.  You can view the other tasters’ notes in real time and there’s also plenty of lively and topical banter.

The first beer event was an Introduction to Trappist Ales.  On the menu were Chimay Red and White and Westmalle Dubbel and Tripel.  The menu is selected largely based on availability, so you shouldn’t have much trouble finding the beers, but you might need to check a specialty store.

Overall I rate it a smashing success.  It did get a little tough to keep up with all of the conversation online, but no more so than at any other large gathering.  I also had family over for a local group tasting, so there were several conversations going on at once.

A few people even chose to tune from their local bar and taste each beer there.  It most certainly doesn’t have to be a solitary event if you don’t want it to be.

I don’t think virtual tastings will ever replace a night out at your favorite beer bar with friends, and they shouldn’t.  But why not do both?  Clear out one night a month from your social calender to stay home, invite a few friends over and make some new ones.  Oh, and drink some great beer too!

The next tasting is scheduled for Feb. 21 and the featured beers will be stouts from Rogue and Samuel Smith.  Followed by a Dogfish Head tasting in March.  Keep an eye on TwitterTasteLive or this site and follow me on Twitter for announcements on upcoming events.

Image from TwitterTasteLive

The results of one of the local competitions were posted today and my Bavarian Hefeweizen took first place in the German Wheat and Rye beer category. I’m not quite sure what to make of this as I actually thought the weizen was the weaker of the beers I submitted so I was quite surprised at the results. The score sheets haven’t arrived in the mail yet, but they should provide more detailed feedback on my entries.

At any rate, I’m still delighted with the results so far. It’s nice to have some feedback that says I’m getting it at least a little right.

It’s been a bit slow brew-wise around here the last 2 weeks. Mostly, I’m waiting on Classic American Pilsner v2.0 to finish fermenting out. It should be done in the next couple of days and once it’s chilled down to lagering temperature and into a keg for storage things should pickup a bit. We’ve also had a bit of a cold snap here this week, highs in the low 40s. So I’m having a go at crash cooling the Rye IPA in the garage and then I can get that kegged up in the next couple of days. I would have liked to have done it sooner, but CAP v2.0 is taking up the refrigeration space presently and it’s currently holding at about 50° F.

Somehow, on top of all of that, I managed to drain the kegerator over the holidays, so I’m draft beer-less. I did give away quite a bit of that last California Common batch, so it went quicker than usual. Perhaps I should look into better planning/scheduling of the brew days to prevent this in the future. At least the next couple of batches On Deck should be fairly quick brews. Blonde Ale, which I’m going to brew this weekend, and the Weizens shouldn’t need a very long fermentation time. 10 days or so to ferment out and another 1-2 weeks to carbonate in the keg.

I’m definitely attempting to step up the number of batches I brew this year. I didn’t keep track exactly, but I finished up somewhere around 10-12 last year. I probably would have brewed more, but I couldn’t drink it all fast enough. A good problem to have I guess. For 2008 I’d like to try to double that and brew about every 2 weeks or so. Hopefully I don’t run out of cold storage space, but between entering some competitions, doing more experimental brewing, splitting batches, trying different yeast strains or specialty grains and just plain giving more of it away, I think I’ll manage.