NHC Day 5: Club Night!

Day 5 of an epic trip to Grand Rapids, MI for the 2014 National Homebrewer's Conference!

I forced myself to get up at a decent hour this day, to take advantage of the cool homebrewing talks going on at the convention center.  Sj stayed in bed like a lucky slug.  My first lecture was Keeping It Simple: What Monks Can Teach Us About Brewing, by Stan Hieronymus.  I love Stan's books and have read Brew Like a Monk twice.  Because of my familiarity with the subject and having now traveled to Belgium twice, I feel that I probably didn't learn a ton from this lecture.  It was still entertaining and not a waste of time.

The second lecture I went to was Mitch Steele from Stone Brewing discussing herbs, spices and botanicals in beers.  Stone has been doing a ton of unusual spices and ingredients in the past few years so this was a cool talk.  I've used many of these ingredients over the years, but some have slipped my net!  I appreciated that he gave some hard numbers for amount to add as a starting place based on their experimentation at Stone.  He also had big bags of herbs in the back for people to take samples of, but I lacked anything to carry them in so left them behind.  Volunteers passed along pitchers of Stone Saison that includes lavender and habanero!

After this it was back the riot that was the exhibits hall/expo.  We drank samples of Moonlight Mead Last Apple and a cool sour beer  from New Holland.  Sj tried to win us a Fast Rack, but failed.  I didn't try since my sausage fingers would likely result in broken glass everywhere.  We gathered more stickers and bottle openers (I think I have hundreds now.)

The Bob

Meeting up with fellow JABber, Mike Lebben, the three of us headed across the street to have lunch at The Bob.  An acronym for Big Old Building, this is a large 1903 grocery warehouse turned into a strange collection of venues.  A small brewery lurks in the basement, Bobarino's pizza place is upstairs, a comedy club, dueling pianos, a steak house, and more!  The brewery was closed (they should have opened up for NHC!) so we went to Bobarino's instead.  We shared a sampler of their beers and those were all across the board: a nasty diacetyl IPA, but Crimson King Amber and Spaceboy Stout were both decent.  The food was also decent but not special.

Back to the exhibits for more free beer samples and to kill a bit more time playing ring toss with keg o-rings.  Then a lecture from Brett Vanderkamp and Jason Salas from New Holland Brewing, talking about using spirits barrels and doing sour beers in barrels.  This was a cool lecture, but so much of it was on a large production brewery scale that I don't know how much was directly useful to me as a homebrewer.  Still, some cool stories and background on the brewery though!  They also served us Dragon's Milk during the talk which made it all worth it!

After this it was nearing time to eat dinner, so we let the last lecture of the day go and headed to HopCat before the post-lecture rush arrived there.  We timed it just right, getting one of the last available outdoor tables (just under a fire escape populated by an angry pigeon by the way!)  We shared a rather expensive bottle of Rodenbach Vintage 2010 with dinner, but well worth it.

Back to the hotel for a quick rest and then back to the convention center for the peak of the whole NHC--Club Night!  Club night is perhaps one of the most fun beer events that I have taken part in.  Coming from a guy who has been to many festivals, beer dinners, etc, that is saying something!  The event was in the same space as the modified Pro Night from the previous day's festivities, but the place had taken on a whole new and crazy vibe.  The clubs who contribute will have jockey boxes, portable bars, MASH unit tents, and other background for their booths ranging from utilitarian to extravagant.  Many clubs dress up in outfits or have a theme to their attire.  Some clubs bring only great beers, others invite any member to contribute--as a result there can be a wide range of quality.  However, overall, I had much better beer at club night than the previous day!

I'll be honest the night was chaotic and a bit blurry.  I did not have my real camera and was busy drinking it all in (so to speak) so I didn't get many good pictures.  Some snippets:

1) The Carolina BrewMasters had a walnut Baltic porter that was one of the best things I had all night--the walnuts really came through!

2) A spicy and amazing poblano wit from someone in the Best Florida Beer supergroup.

3) Mike Lebben tasting a beer that he described as "Feels like someone shat in my mouth after they ate a bunch of aluminum fans!"

4) Having someone jump in front of me in line at the Mead Mamas booth and realizing it was Susan Ruud.  Since Susan is opening her own Prairie Rose Meadery I took this as a good sign that the meads were not going to strip the paint off my house and give my family a permanent orange aftro!

5) Susan and Sarajo getting molested by Hop Man!

Hop Man!

6) Travis Scrotch from MASH letting me try his great maibock and very Pliny-like double IPA.

7) The crews from Midwest and Northern Brewer all dressed up like enormous gnomes.

Sj and a drive-by gnoming...and getting photo-bombed by BrewToad!

8) The ANNiHiLATED booth from NJ serving up Poltergeueze--a two year blended lambic that was as good as nearly anything I had in Belgium.  I believe the brewer was Adam Juncosa.  I went back for several "samples" of that one!

9) Seeing the BrewToad mascot navigating the urinals in the men's room, while everyone laughed and tried to take pictures of his junk.

10) Mike Sutor (another long lost Facebook friend from Seattle NHC) sharing his homebrewed cherry sour that knocked my socks off!  Might have to drive to Wisconsin to try some more of his beers!

11) Watching one poor drunken sot trying to shove messy gloopy nachos into his mouth but getting them all over his face instead.

12) Finishing up the night with one last sampler of Poltergeueze and heading back to the hotel before things get messy.

Up Next: NHC Days 6-7 The End!

Book Report: For The Love Of Hops, by Stan Hieronymus

Continuing my series of book reports about good homebrew and beer related books, this month I look at the recent publication For The Love Of Hops, by Stan Hieronymus.  This book is one of the Brewing Elements series from Brewers Publications, a division of the Brewers Association.  The series aims to publish a definitive tome on each of the major ingredients in beer, starting with Yeast, then Hops, and the recently released Water.  I've got the latter as well, but need time to dig into that meaty book.  This series is really aimed at professional brewers and includes a lot of chemistry, biochemistry and large-scale brewing advice.  However, with the lines between professional and hobbyist blurring from the advent of the Internet and better general beer knowledge, a lot of the information is useful to the homebrewer as well.  Thanks for the book Keith!

Our hoppy journey begins with a forward by Ken Grossman (founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing) about his personal history with the hop and the change in the hop industry over the years.  Having been at the forefront of American craft brewing, his take on things is valuable and interesting.  I won't ruin it for you!

Next up is a fairly lengthy introduction by the author that spends some time on the history of hop growing and then to the idea that triggered the writing of this book.  The gist I got was that even the "hop experts" still have a lot of questions and Hieronymus drew the short straw to try putting all the info currently available into one small publication.  Brave man!

Chapter 1 starts with aroma, probably since aroma is the first thing one tends to notice about hops.  There is a lot of heavy science in this chapter populated with aroma wheels and spider graphs.  The author sites a lot of studies, resulting in plenty of information, as well as the obvious fact that this chapter barely scratches the surface of the subject.

The 2nd chapter goes back to the history of hops in beer and farming, and is perhaps my favorite section of the book.  Gone are the complex scientific formulas and names--this is history folks!  Following this (too short) historic lesson is a chapter that focuses on the future of the hop--paying much attention to hop breeding programs in the current day.  If you don't know much about the subject, this is an eye-opening intro to the complexities of hop husbandry!  It is also interesting to learn how the process of selecting and breeding hops is handled.  Continuing in this vein, chapters 4 and 5 pay attention to the arts of hop farming and harvesting.

Chapter 6 is useful from a technical perspective, as it discusses differences in hop products like cone, pellet, and extracts.  There is also an extensive list of the currently available (some still new and rare) hops along with their acids, oils and backgrounds.  A good place to start for info on newer hops, but I wish there was a bit more about their aroma and flavor profiles included.

Chapter 7 is about IBU's and using the hops in the brewhouse.  Formulas, talk of kettle geometry and interviews with brewers cavort through this chapter!  This is the nitty-gritty for the serious pro brewer.  Following this section is one on dry-hopping, an essential discussion for modern brewing techniques.  Off flavors take the center stage in chapter 9 and explains how hops can go terribly wrong.

The final chapter is really a bunch of recipes from professional brewers around the globe.  These range from IPA's to Continental lagers from breweries like Firestone Walker, Fullers, Victory and many more.  If you need some clone recipes to try--this is a good place to start.

Overall I enjoyed reading this book.  For the serious home or professional brewer there is a lot of concise information in here.  One of the big things I discovered was that not even the big brewers and scientists know all that much about hops.  There is a ton of new information yet to be learned in the near future.  Think of this as more of a brewing textbook than an entertaining read.  While there are some good anecdotes, the main thrust of this book is hard science.  Even with my background in medicine (with plenty of chemistry classes lurking behind me) there are sections that my mind wants to shake off and ignore as too difficult to pay attention to!  For those just starting the hobby, read How To Brew or something a bit lighter to start.  But for those mega-geek guys like me who can never seem to get enough beer information, go ahead and try this out!