All,

Slept very well last night! I missed the first class because I didn't set the alarm clock! I was in no state to even change a light switch from off to on. Today I roamed around a bit with the movie camera (since I missed the first class) and recorded the sights and sounds. The classes were packed. Standing room only! These were big rooms holding huge events.

I got to my second class (early) It was about making good cider with every day store bought juices. It was a class I really wanted to attend because I am thinking about doing hard ciders with apples from my tree. Last year we had a late frost and destroyed all the blossoms. A very interesting class given by a award winning beer and cider brewer. They gave samples as he talked. A smoked bourbon cider and another that I have forgotten already?

After lunch I will be attending (either) Mead and Chocolate: Experience Excellence or Brewing Better Beer: or Practical Applications by Gorden Strong? I found that classes with cheese or chocolate usually give out ample samples so I am leaning that way. I will have to remember my glass this time because I forgot it for the cider class and got nothing!!

After the Keynote address this afternoon we will record a podcast for Basic Brewing Radio. I brewed a beer in January and stored the wort in the no-chill container. I brewed the same exact beer in late May. I fermented the beer the next day and also fermented the January twin beer. They fermented next to each other and bottled weeks later. I hope it will show that storing fresh wort will not harm it. OR I might set back no-chilling and storing wort back ten years?

Tonight is the famous "Club night" This will be the crown jewel of the weekend. The beers served are crazy with (hops, sours, fruit, spices?) the beer is by far the best the local club's have to offer. Excellent beer and all you have to do is hand them your glass. Free beer and new friends. What could be better.

The trade show is every day. All sorts of brewing gadgets. Mostly fancy high-tech 3 vessel stuff. They did have a electric BIAB setup by "High Gravity Brewing" I tried to talk the owner into selling "Certified No-chill" containers. If some brewing supply shop would take a chance and put them on line it wold make no chilling commonplace instead of extremest.

Got to go I am late for class again!!!

I made it to the mead (honey wine) and chocolate parings class. I was late (as usual) but it worked to my advantage. I stood for the hour along the wall where the servers walked back and forth putting pitchers of beer and chocolate on the tables. We were amply served the specially made mead's with as much chocolate we could want.

Bob Bob Bob, what a perfect place to go on a beer diet, and your effin it up with chocolate!!

It's 3:00 am and the party is over. I met a million (or so) very nice people. The beers at club night were awesome to say the least along with meades and bragots. The noise was a riot of sounds and smells. I never had a bad beer or a bad brewer. I had more than one person recognize me and said "your Bobbrews" I had other strangers bring their friends over to me and thanking me for (hope vodka, Bath cooked eggs or BIAB No-chill) gee wiz the world is getting smaller.

Earlier in the day after the main welcoming speech. I had the guys from Basic brewing Radio over and we recorded a podcast about long term wort storage. We tested the beer I brewed in January against the one I brewed four months later and the original one brewed by Sam Adams out of Boston. After that we went out in the rain to find a place to eat. We ended up with pizza. We broke up after supper and struck out on are own.

Time to pass out now! It's now 3:10 am and in a few hours I have to get back to class!

smyrnaquince wrote:Livin' the dream through reading your posts! Great stuff, as long as I keep my office door closed so no one hears me laughing. Looking forward to the next report.

I'm still laughing at, "Michigan's state bird. The mosquito."

Great stuff Bob .

Heading out now with a few fellow homebrewers to have some sympathy beers for you.


PP

Ok!! I just spent a couple of hours updating you on everything I did! It was full of facts and good jokes! I was Drinking a dragon milk stout with a few pieces of cheese! When I tried to submit it the hotel wifi puked and I lost two hours of typing, spell checks and research! Sorry but this is the SECOND time today that happened!

I had a lot of beer. I learned a lot. I am going home tomorrow early!

I Hope I remember to copy this to memory be for I hit SUBMIT!

Oh sure that last post made it and the good BIG ones are in cyberspace! Good by for now! Video coming next week!

Safe trip Bob. Take your time and take it easy .

I do a bit of cider from store-bought juice. If you learned anything helpful/useful, please pass it on after you get home.

Hmm. I never thought of pairing chocolate and mead. And what a great idea--stand by the back wall!

Hope your home safe & sound now Bob;

Did you remember to use I-80 and avoid the mosquitoes?

I too mally am worried about Bob. Today is Thursday and we still haven't heard from him. Maybe this explains it....

all,
The NHC was a blast. No Question! My reporting was terrible. I apologize. I have written some interesting and informative posts. Sadly (twice) the hotel WiFi malfunctioned and I lost two hours work each time. Also (twice) I ignored my own advice to type in a word processor and save the file before a cut and paste was performed! Now, I was "under the influence" but I still should have know better.

As a quick note below is the first of the BBR Basic Brewing Radio shows taped at the NHC. It is a very interesting but slightly confusing (because they used numbers) so I had to listen twice. They tasted and rated 8 beers that were identical but were aerated differently. (shaking, pure oxygen, over oxygenated with pure oxygen, aquarium pump, no aeration, de-gasser [stir stick on drill], bucket to bucket) It was very good.

July 4, 2013 - NHC Aeration Experiment
http://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=radio

You guys are NOT going to believe this but I fuck'en did it again! I typed a re-hash of the week and while looking for a link to where I ate I searched on the wrong page and lost another hour of work!!! I do not believe I did it again! I haven't done it for years and now I have three dumb ass moves in 5 days!

Here is a short note while I go to get ready for company. In the photo of the free hand outs we received you can see a can of beer! The beer was a commemorative can from some craft brewery that was just starting to can it own beer. Nice and with a big bottle of hoppy rye ale too. The gifts were dumped in my paper bag that held all the other gifts. Read this that I wrote on Facebook......

Somewhere high in the mountains of Pennsylvania while driving home from the NHC I heard a muffled pop! It was my commemorative beer can exploding in my luggage! Sadly I could not suck the beer from my cars carpeting because of all the clothes and commemorative handouts absorbing it. I did however get to enjoy the aroma of the beer for the next 1200 miles. Sad to lose a beer. Even sadder when you have to clean out the car and lose the beer smell! I liked it. Mary didn't!

I recall now in the alcohol daze of the NHC numerous parties That someone said " the cans were defective and you should drink them quickly"? Of course I forgot and I paid for it! In all actuality I didn't smell anything but it sounded better that way. I will redo AGAIN the conference in my word processor stay tuned! The cans were the first off the new caner and they "screwed the pooch" big time! I was lucky. Many people had the (Can Bombs) in their luggage and camera bags!

All

This is my fourth attempt to write up a blog of what I did at the National Home Brewers conference in Philadelphia PA. The classes I attended were full each and every class. My favorite class was the cheese pairing with beer. I think it was six cheeses and trying them against a dark beer and hoppy beer. After trying them we had a hand vote as to which beer was best. I had a lot of trouble waiting for them to stop talking before I tried the beer.

The city of Philadelphia has a law stating that you cannot serve beer or alcohol before 11 AM. That means the first two classes you had to bring your own beer. Normally in each class they serve you beer or cider or mead depending on what type of class it was. Having free beer and other spirits lends itself to class participation. The classes were lively and informative and fattening.

The Mead with chocolate was a particularly good class in that you got as much chocolate as you wanted. The problem with chocolate of course is that it melts in your hand and standing around waiting for some lady to stop talking made for a messy hand. I licked it off my hands and drank my beer along with it. Sea salt chocolate, jalapeno chocolate, and plain old dark chocolate pared well with any type of Mead they gave us.

I took a class on making cider from any type of common home apple juice. It seems easy enough to do so I am going to a brew hopped cider. I just bought seven cans of frozen apple concentrate to give it a whirl. Hopped cider will go good this fall from my tapper.

I rarely actually had a meal while in Philadelphia. I did have a Philly cheese steak because if you went to Philadelphia and you didn't, you will never live it down. The Philly cheese steak may not be fancy fair but it is good and fattening. I ate at a Cajun place and had Étouffée. It's a bit spicy but it was very good. I also had pizza, again not fancy fair but it was quick and good.

Pro Brewers night was very interesting. I could not begin to drink all the beers that were presented to me that night. It is better to drink 25% of the beers and remember a 100% then to drink 100% percent of the beers and remember 25%. The young kids try to drink everything and remember nothing. I was there to learn not only to have a good time.

Even though the pro-brewers were craft brewers they still seemed as if they were too big to be at the NHC. They all had to temper their beers because some of these were going to be going public soon and they always have to worry about being accepted by the mass of beer drinkers. The beer was still awesome to behold and most brewers answered any question you asked. No one held back as to any secrets on brewing their beers.

After Pro Brewers night we had another party from midnight until two in the morning. So generally by the time you got to your room it was at least 2:30 AM . When I got to my room I generally took a shower and then went to write down the thoughts of the day. Of course I lost most of the information for that day due to my stupidity and the Wi-Fi system that had to be refreshed and lost any information in the process of doing it.

Traditionally the best night of all is club night. Participating clubs generally wear outlandish outfits to go along with the club's theme. It is a garish affair no holds barred. I was wearing a buzzard hat and I was hardly noticeable. Their were beer wenches in tight fitting outfits and people dressed as space aliens. All were friendly courteous and acted as if you were a long lost friend.

The free food that was laid out was ample, good and went well with beer. I tried to eat just enough to keep my stomach still but not fill it with food. I needed room for beer and more beer. I had sweet beers, I had sour beers, I had fruit beers, I had malty beers, I had hoppy beers. The variations in beer were endless. As I paced myself I kept thinking that I would only drink a fraction of all the beers presented to me but I do not regret drinking fewer beers because I was semi-sober and was headache free the next day!

The conference as a whole was exhausting but yet exhilarating. I met a lot of friends, I made a lot of friends and I never met a rude or unfriendly person. The time went by quickly and I generally did not know what day or time it was. Normally a punctual person, I was late for almost everything and paid for it by standing along in the aisles. Nevertheless, even I learned a thing or two.

I talked to Brad Smith from BeerSmith after his presentation on brewing. He slightly mentioned in his class, no chill. After class I accosted him and filled him in on how no chill works. It's a little after the fact but he is a wiser man now. I don't know if he'll listen to my experiment on basic brewing radio but I told him to listen anyway. I also talked to two men who owned homebrew stores and tried to get them to supply no chill containers I don't know if they will but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Today is the Fourth of July our country's birthday so I will celebrate with friends and beer. I have to go now because I have to get dressed before company comes. I hope they drink a lot of beer I have a few new beers to put on tap and I lost a lot of time drinking while out of town.

I am not typing this. I am using a voice recording program from Dragon. It seems to work quite well except for transposing and misquoting a few words. I am sure I am at fault not them. So in conclusion next years NHC is in Grand Rapids Michigan. I hope to be there and I hope you will be too. If you can learn a trick or two, get free beer, party all night long why not?

Bob Stempski (town drunk)

Bob, I first thought this was a PP response.......So, you must be as good as PP is using Dragon!!!!!

joshua,

I accused PP of the same thing! Now I know how he does it! Dragon was bought a year ago and put on my laptop. It's been sitting there unused ever since. I was so disappointed in my stupidity that I retried it in Microsoft Word (and saved it). It worked OK but my wife keep yelling "What? What did you say? speak up" If I closed the office door the dog either wanted in or out. It was a bit uncomfortable but once I go used to it, it was still uncomfortable!

I was a big failure in the blog part of it. I really feel bad. If my better half lets me go next year I will do better. Part of the problem is that since I had a lot of friends there that wanted to get together. I was torn between eating lunch or recording my thoughts. I did both, but poorly!

Today I added the brandied figs to the fermenter for my dark fig beer. I also added cans of peaches and peach pie filling to my "Grocery" beer contest entry. It's back to active fermentation after finishing a week ago. Cheers

Happy Birthday America!

Great write up ! Talk up !! or whatever it was there Bob thanks for going to the trouble of making us all jealous..

I hope PP is already using dragon cos is if he ain't we're all in for some big post when he does

And A BIG HAPPY 4TH OF JULY to you Bob and all my American brew buddies



Yeasty

Thanks for the update Bob, once again you have turned me green with envy.
I am troubled though ....y ou said you had to get dressed, and I have this image of you talking to your Dragon program and well
PS is anyone else running slow and getting "long running script" messages?

Lylo,

I am sorry for the reference of getting dressed. I meant to say, change from my work clothes to "the clean company clothes" If you were blinded or had a violent regurgitation I don't blame you! That's why I have covered the bathroom mirrors.

Yeasty,

Thanks for the birthday wishes. We made it another year!

P.S. I can't remember if I told anyone that I had a class or to with the winner of "Cheese" Oh, I think I did??

Great write up Bob, glad your back home safe too!

I thought you had been incognito due to interrogating your daughters after leaving them home alone with PP lurking

I'm writing nothing 'cos my Dragon just crashed. Laughing too much at Bob's swearing above anyway.

PistolPatch wrote:

I'm writing nothing 'cos my Dragon just crashed. Laughing too much at Bob's swearing above anyway.

Yes, I am not much of a swearer anymore! My days in Vietnam and Australia were my height of foul mouth'eian! Since I had four daughters I had to clean up my act and now with eleven grandchildren I have had to toe the line further. So my wickedness must have been a shocker to all. I was pissed because I tried to stay reasonable sober to post here and I flubbed it!

From my cheese and beer paring class.

swamproad,

I would have to be asked and I would have to get the nerve to do it. You know I can't shut up once I get going? See you next meeting!

BobBrews wrote:You know I can't shut up once I get going

You could always have the audiance throw cheese and chocolate at you, I've heard that that will keep you quiet !



Yeasty