HomebrewCon 2017: The Last Day

It's over.

It's finally over.

Now I can dry out.

The last day was a bit of a scamper, with two seminars to hit before one last pass at the expo floor. Then there's acquiring some of the finest liquid souvenirs from the nearest liquor store. Oh, and I had to buy and mail a Father's Day card. No pressure.

The first seminar was "Recipe Development with Dangerous Man" and their three brewers, Alxndr Jones, John Leingang and Rob Miller. It was alright. They discussed how they, well, came up with recipes. Early on, it was a lot of trial and error. Their first batch of rye beer gummed up their mash tun, so maybe 40% is too much.

The next session was "Kinda Brown, Mostly Sexy: A Semi-autobiographical Account of the Actual History and Brewing of Porters and Stouts" presented by Kris England. He's head brewer at Bent Brewstillery in town and - perhaps more importantly - a BJCP Grand Master IV judge and co-author of the BJCP 2015 Guidelines. He's also a gonzo dresser. It's hard to make out in the picture, but he's wearing a blue blazer with white stars, red trousers and black wellies with a floral pattern.

Kris England, dressed to kill you with laughter

Kris said right off the bat that he's highly caffeinated, but he learned in grad school that people won't pay attention to your lectures if you're boring. "Delivery beats content," he said. And he's right.

He went over the history of stouts and porters while occasionally badgering his friends in the audience and imploring us to drink more of the beer. (Speaking of which, he was kind enough to say at the very beginning what the beers were - Bent's Nicked and Schell's Stag Series #10 Tropical Stout - so we can get our Untapped check-ins out of the way.)

If you're a AHA member, this is one of the seminar recordings you need to watch. It's simply that good.
On a completely unrelated note, I thought this shirt in the audience was hilarious:

I darted to the expo floor to meet some folks for a Northern Brewer giveaway. Everyone got one of four beer superhero trading cards in their bag. Form a superhero team and you got a small prize (a NB logo tasting glass) and entry into a drawing for a $250 gift card and a $1000 gift card. As it turns out, forming teams was probably more trouble than most people wanted to bother with, so there weren't a lot of entries. They haven't called or e-mailed me yet, so I'm guessing I didn't win. Oh well.

I nabbed some grain samples for the gang back at the homebrew shop. Then there's the pillaging of the leftover swag bags. If you want another pen or cleaner sample, this is the time.

I made it to the post office with less than two minutes to spare, and I had to jog several blocks to manage even that. On the way back to the hotel, I detoured to Haskell's ("The Wine People!") for some beer to take home. The selection at this downtown location wasn't great, but it had more than I could fit in a duffel bag.

Souvenirs. #homebrewcon2017 pic.twitter.com/jNta7O4GYm

— Zymurginian (@zymurginian) June 17, 2017

Did all the beer, grain, hops, and tchochke fit? As they say up here, "You betcha!"

Will it all fit? Yeah! #homebrewcon2017 pic.twitter.com/wrmiXlikyG

— Zymurginian (@zymurginian) June 17, 2017

And that was how my second HomebrewCon went. Hard to say if it was better than Baltimore, but I'm definitely glad I went. Next year's event is a bit later in June in Portland. There's a beer city for you. I might even get the Mrs and the boy to fly out ... and find other things to do.

Meanwhile, it's back to the real world, and getting my home brewery space built!

HomebrewCon 2017: Day 1

Day one of HomebrewCon began quietly for your humble blogger. The morning sessions were for industry types, so I had a leisurely breakfast and wrote the prologue post before heading over to hit the expo floor. I learned from last year that there's a lot of swag handed out and many good products to check out, so I made a point to spend several hours checking out the booths. I work part-time at a homebrew shop so I was also on the lookout for products that might do well there. Just because I wouldn't buy some gizmo doesn't mean our customers won't.

I picked up the swag bag and it was already heavy. This year there's a commemorative beer by Surly called Walezbrah. It's an auburn-colored beer (7.5% ABV) and maded with an oaked pale wheat wort. "Whalezbrah! is tart, funky, wheaty, and contains waves of weird wood throughout," says Surly's webpage about the beer. "We’re never brewing it again, so it’s truly a whale. Brah." I managed to get extra bottles of last year's Airwaves, so maybe I can bag a second bottle later on.

This year we also got Beeginnings, a small (6.3oz) bottle of blackberry/raspberry/black currant mead (12% ABV) made with orange blossom honey. Three meaderies and a local homebrew club collaborated to make this clear, raspberry-colored gem and mead. There's also a small bottle of fruit puree (I got blood orange). Then there's a few stickers, a pen, two lip balms, a bottle opener, and some other small tchochke. On to the expo floor!

Weyermann's Axel Jany

Weyermann brought in Axel Jany from Germany to talk about the company and some of their products. He's a great speaker and quite entertaining. He passed around small samples of their various products so folks could do a little chew-testing. At then end, they gave away 10lb bags of a new floor-malted grain. They brought 100 bags, but there were way more than that at the demo. Yours truly missed out. Oh well.

I asked him afterwards what made floor-malted grain different (aside from the price). He chuckled and said there wasn't a huge difference. He said brewers were mainly interested in it for the "story:" It's how grain used to be malted, and some brewers want that old-school product. He said the Czechs can't get enough of it.

Later on I found myself at the Briess booth to get my free pound of Carapils Copper malt and to try some new (for me) varieties. I asked Bob Hansen how I could best use their Extra Special malt, and I got a 10-15 minute discourse on the various caramel malts and how Extra Special is different. The color in the Caremel malts is linear (1oz of Caramel 90 will give you the same color as 9oz of Caramel 10) but the flavors will be quite different. Extra Special is a 130L hybrid that has qualities of both caramel and dry malts. It's less roasty, and Bob said it would be excellent in an Irish stout like Beamish.

Then I got the lowdown on their CBW Rye, which I've used before and rather like. It was originally made for a customer to include in a beer kit, but Briess was later allowed to sell it separately. It's 20% rye with 10% Caramel 40 and 70% base malt (normally 2-row). Bob can talk your ear off, but that's enthusiasm for you. That's also why I come to these things.

Denny Conn, Marshall Schott, Drew Beechum
and Malcolm Frazier

After trying many tasty beers (Bent Paddle's amber ESB is fan-frickin-tastic!) I finally took in a seminar. The guys behind Brulosophy (Marshall Schott and Malcolm Frazier) and Experimental Brewing (Denny Conn and Drew Beechum) did a session on "citizen science" and their efforts to do experiments in the realm of homebrewing. It was a fun and enlightening session.

Then they said "dickchimp."

The "dickchimp" slide

Dickchimp is a verb meaning "to make a mistake, screw up." Denny hopes it will make it into the homebrew lexicon. I think we can make that happen.

Aside from being a hilarious word, the point was that you can learn a lot from your mistakes. Science involves a lot of mistakes, goofs and happy accidents. Also, YMMV: Your process may lead to different results than they got, so don't take their results as gospel.

I accumulated a lot of stuff on this day so I could spend more time in the seminars. The bag was almost full by the time I was done and boy were my arms tired.

Swag bag

And here's what I picked up:

The big contents

The flat stuff

This year seems to be the year for trucker hats. I was offered several, but politely took just one. Also, Spike Brewing is giving away a conical Friday and Saturday to someone wearing that bright green shirt. Guess what I'm wearing?

Surly's Omar Ansari gave the keynote speech. Very entertaining and passionate guy. After some good stories about him building hs brewery (and giving himself carbon monoxide poisoning in the process) he ended with a call to promote and protect craft beer.

The beer they poured was also tasty, but I have no idea what it was. Guessing a Surly brew. Maybe the commemorative beer?

Next time - Day 2.