Going to NHC 2012

I am on my way to the 34th Annual National Homebrewers Conference. I am going to keep journal entries on the trip.

Here is my agenda:

Wednesday, June 20

• BNA7 – To commemorate the BN surviving an unbelievable seven years (no, really, how is it still going??), please join us at Elysian Brewing Company for an evening of beer, music, and general homebrewer geekiness… ahem, I mean, manly mauuuun stuff.

Thursday, June 21

• The Rock Bottom Beer and Food Pairing Kick-off Breakfast – What better way to catch the conference spirit than at this beer-and-breakfast event right before Opening Toast! Located just steps from the conference site, Rock Bottom promises a crowd-pleasing array of food accompanied by samples from its line-up of house-brewed beers, all hosted by the Rock Bottom brewmaster. 2011 WBC recognized. GABF recognized.

• Welcome Toast – Gary Glass, Mark Emiley, Senator Ken Jacobsen, Tom Schmidlin

• Brewing Techniques for Historical IPA – Mitch Steele – India Pale Ale has gone through several stylistic revisions in its 250 years of existence. In this presentation, a brief summary of the history of IPA will be reviewed, along with two complete recipes taken from brewlogs from the 1800s and one more recent recipe. The recipes will be compared and contrasted and will include an analysis of ingredients and brewing techniques used for each time period.

• Thank You; I’ll Have Another – Jennifer Talley will explore the growing popularity of session beers and why they are a perfect fit for the craft industry. In addition, the differing ways to tackle a session beer recipe will be discussed, including the malt bill, mash profile, hopping and more.

• Drink What You Think – Ray Daniels – Recipe formulation creates many opportunities for creativity – and many distractions from your goals. This seminar will discuss ways to pursue recipe formulation so that you both learn and create beers that are satisfying and enjoyable to drink. Along the way, we’ll talk about the basic tasks of recipe formulation in a way that’s appropriate for newer brewers, but the overall approach to recipe creation will benefit many who have not followed anyone else’s recipe for years.

• Lagunitas – Brewing Hoppy Beers – Coming out to the National Conference this year in Seattle? Why don’t you give our Hop Stoopid recipe a go?? Brew a batch and see how it turns out. Then bring a bottle of your finished product to the conference and join us in our suite. We’ll have OUR version of Hop Stoopid there AND our Head Brewer, Jeremy Marshall! You can sample your beer against ours and see how close you got. Then you can hang out and talk with Jeremy about the creativity, challenges and the fun of brewing hoppy beers. This is not a contest, just a cool & casual sharing of ideas and techniques.

• Pro-Brewers Night – Pro-Brewers Night offers attendees a private beer festival within the conference with 1800 of their closest homebrewing friends, clubmates, and professional brewers from across the country. This year, there’s a pro-am competition taking place. Just to add to the fun!

Friday, June 22

• Brewing Better Beer: Practical Applications – Join author Gordon Strong as he discusses how to apply favorite reader tips from Brewing Better Beer. Understand the decisions and reasoning used to create two new all-grain recipes. Learn the approach, not just the recipes, as you see how your target beer preferences affect the decisions you make throughout the brewing process.

• Book Signing: Gordon Strong – Brewing Better Beer

• Brewing Beer with Fresh Hops – What are fresh hop beers and how can they be brewed? Jamie Floyd will discuss the many aspects of this under-researched topic, how to use fresh hops, what to look for, preparing for the brew day and many other topics related to this wonderful annual tradition.

• Mead & Cheese: Perfect Partners – Berniece Van Der Berg – A marriage that does come with a manual – how to pair mead and cheese. This seminar will break it down in styles; quickie guide, odd couples, some like it hot!

• Book Signing: Dick Cantwell – Barley Wine

• Book Signing: Jamil Zainasheff, Yeast, Brewing Classic Styles

• Keynote Address – Charles Finkel, of the Pike Brewing Co., is presenting this year’s keynote address! Charles’ experience is far-reaching, from founding a wine importing company that specialized in craft producers in the ‘60s, importing some of Europe’s finest beers in the ‘70s, contributing to many books and magazines regarding beer, to — of course — founding Pike in 1989.

• Book Signing: Charlie Papazian – Complete Joy of Homebrewing, Homebrewers Gold, Microbrewed Adventures, The Homebrewers Companion

• Book Signing: Stan Hieronymus – Brew Like a Monk, Brewing with Wheat

• Brewing on the Ones – Drew Beechum – Homebrewers today are lucky! We’re awash in a sea of ingredients, making recipe design a tough battle between ingredients we know and trust and new shiny toys. Sometimes we even give in to our neophilic lust and throw it all in the mix. But it doesn’t have to be that way! “Brewing on the Ones” intends to shine a light on the complexity of simplicity while blowing well past the limitations of the SMaSH (single malt and single hop) concept.

• AHA Members Meeting

• Club Night – Club Night is “The Party” not to be missed! Where else can you hang out with 1600 of your closest homebrewing friends? The AHA National Homebrewers Conference Club Night has a history of clubs serving some of their finest beers to our amazing community of homebrewers.

Saturday, June 23

• Specialty Malts – Robert Seggewiss will discuss the many types of specialty malts currently available while focusing on how homebrewerers can use them to enhance their beer.

• Club Panel – Chris P. Frey, Drew Beechum, Nate Muller, Will Fredin – Homebrewing’s growth is affecting every aspect of the hobby, including your local homebrew club. This forum is less about talking to experts and more about helping everyone get a handle on how to make your club run and have a ton of fun. Come with your questions and ideas, and together we’ll get to the heart of what we all need to make a happy club.

• Beer Tasting – In this seminar, Ted Hausotter will explore the nuances of tasting beer, the wide range of perceivable flavors, how to taste and ways to improve your tasting ability.

• Book Signing: Ray Daniels, Designing Great Beers, Brown Ale, Smoked Beers

• Water Panel – Water: the final frontier. These are the questions of brewers everywhere. Our continuing mission: to explain this strange new world, to define best practices and new considerations, to boldly brew better than you have ever brewed before. John Palmer, co-author of the soon to be released Water – A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers, will moderate a panel made up of co-author Colin Kaminski and technical editors Martin Brungard and A.J. deLange. The discussions will emphasize take-home techniques that homebrewers can use to tame the final frontier with the potential for substantial improvements to their beers. The panel will present a summary of best practices to start the program and then take questions from the audience for discussion.

• Book Signing: Randy Mosher, Tasting Beer, Radical Brewing

• Book Signing: John Palmer, How to Brew, Brewing Classic Styles

• Trouble Shooting Panel – Gordon Strong, Jamil Zainasheff, John Palmer, Randy Mosher, Ray Daniels – Join America’s best and brightest homebrew experts as they get grilled with questions both silly and sublime related to bad beers, balky brewhouses, black bocks, bent burners, barley bugs and who knows what else. Come loaded with your own questions and enjoy learning from the experiences of others. Fun for the whole family!

• Grand Banquet and National Homebrew Competition Award Ceremony