on wednesday night i'll be at this: http://phillytapfinder.com/event/brewing-networks-bna8/
looking forward to drinking Founder's Bolt Cutter & Doom, Moonlight Russian Imperial Braggot, Stone's Reason Be Damned, Weyerbacher Aquila & Insanity... at least i hope to taste all of these, we'll see how far i make it down that list. supposedly there will also be some special meads from Moonlight Meadery.
so i survived the National Homebrewer's Conference... still waiting to hear if stevewizzle made it back
wednesday: the above-mentioned BNA8 party. i liked the bolt cutter better than the doom. the russian imperial braggot was insane. hop'solutely was surprisingly good. tasted a number of other winners. entertainment provided by The Trophy Fire (great power pop/rock) and the kids from the School of Rock (they melted faces).
thursday night was pro night, when the professionals brewers poured their wares in the grand convention hall. best thing i tasted was Bitter Valentine, by Williamsburg AleWerks. must have had at least 5 tastings of that. the smaller breweries brought their A-game, some of the bigger boys phoned it in - Firestone Walker poured Wooky Jack, only, and the batch seemed off. DFH had some great stuff on offer. Sam was serving for a while.
friday night was club night - the most fun i've had in a long while. homebrew clubs decorate their tables with a theme and tried to out-serve everyone else. a NYC club had 25 beers on tap. a WV club had a kegerator that looked just like a mining wagon full of coal, with dynamite sticks as the tap handles. a club from sacremento, Barley Legal, erected a whole saloon that was kick-ass. they won the Golden Urinal award for bringing the most kegs - somewhere north of 100, probably around 150. the theme for our club, the DC Homebrewers, was "occupy beer", protesting bad beer, "fermentation without representation", "we are the 5.8% (abv)", etc. i can't even begin to decide what was the best beer that i tasted. it was all awesome - a raspberry berliner wiesse, several barrel-aged RIS, lambics and geuzes, meads... it was beer nirvana.
friday night was the grand banquet which was a food pairing sponsored by Rogue. at this point i was pretty beer'ed out. the food, which was made with beer, was nice but the beer was merely OK: honey kolsch (new), american amber, rogenbier rye (new, i think), and the hazelnut brown.
i also attended many seminars, got all sorts of free stuff from the vendor expo, traded beer, and drank more beer. summer camp for beer dorks.
