Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
After spending a night at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel we made our way to the Town & Country Resort in San Diego’s Hotel Circle which is spread over 42 acres and was the host hotel for the National Homebrewers Conference 2015!!! While waiting for our room, we first went to the Social Expo where many of the big manufacturers & providers of homebrew systems, malts, yeasts, and of course… some of the best craft breweries in the nation were there to make sure that we’re all aware of their wonderful products and how if we acted now we could take advantage of some great bargains. Izzy & I thought… we’re all about that sweet, sweet swag!!! Here are some pictures…
That afternoon, the SF Homebrewers Guild hosted a booth at the Social Club where we had a half dozen of our beers on tap… ranging from Smoked Malt Belgian Ale and a Roggenbier to our Strawberry Hefeweizen (our full five gallons went quickly). Here are some pictures…
That night was the Welcome Reception where members of the (Professional) Brewers Association treated guests to their wonderful fares…
The scene the next morning...
Towards the end of the night, Izzy & I were heading to our room with a pretty hefty buzz going… and we ran into two gentleman (Doug & Mike) who were in good moods as well… and we got to rappin’… and Doug was a goddamn American hero lawyer who made homebrewing legal in the great state of Utah a few years back!!! So we drank some more beers, got some pizza, and chatted into the evening… horrible picture though...
Friday, we went to a few seminars with expert speakers going over a wide array of topics from Yeast Propagation to Brewery Construction to Beer Blending to Mead Making to Growing Your Own Hops to the History of Brewing and everything in between… here are some lame pictures of the seminars…
After some more swag grabbin’ at the Expo, it was time to set up the SF Homebrewers Guild booth for Club Night. Being from San Francisco, we decided to do an Alcatraz theme & dress up as prisoners… and of course serve our finest hooch…
Saturday was more seminars during the day… and then we headed over to White Labs Taproom. White Labs is a major provider of yeast strains for homebrewing & we use their products almost exclusively (until our swag from this trip) and their taproom is a great way to test their products. Basically they’ll start with a base wort like an India Pale Ale… and then have four beers using a different variety of yeast in each, bringing out different flavors, esters, mouthfeel, all kinds of things. It’s a great little experiment… and having transportation, we took full advantage!!!
That evening was the Grand Banquet finale where we were treated to a fine meal & present for the announcements of the annual awards like Homebrew Club of the Year and the medal winners from the homebrew competition. Here are more pictures…
This was the end of the fantastic National Homebrewers Conference… but not the end of the adventure by any means… to be continued…
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