2016 National Homebrewers Conference


The 2016 National Homebrewers Conference was held on June 9-11 in Bawlmer, hon! It took place at the Convention Center, across the street from the Pratt Street Ale House and up the street from the Inner Harbor.

Many pre-conference events took place at a number of Baltimore and DC locations, including Right Proper Brewing Company, 3 Stars Brewing Company, Meridian Pint, Brewer's Art, Mark Supik & Company, Heavy Seas Beer, Union Craft Brewing, Atlas Brew Works, Birroteca Baltimore, Max's Taphouse, and Peabody Heights Brewery. A walking tour of Brewers Hill included several pub stops. A bus tour stopped at four breweries and Maryland Homebrew.

Thursday June 9. The morning was sunny, dry, cool, and beautiful. I took the Light Rail into Baltimore, checked into the conference, left my keg with the cellar fellers, and then dropped my bags at the Sheraton so I wouldn't have to walk around with them until my room was ready. That took a huge burden off me. It reminded me of my divorce.

The Homebrew Expo had displays of lots of brewing equipment, gadgets, and ingredients. I oohed and aahed at all the neat stuff, ran into a lot of familiar faces (some of whom I'd not seen in years), and sampled many homebrews offered at Social Club (kudos to Cross Street Irregulars member Matt Barra, whose Flanders red was spectacular). I also tried some of the commercial offerings such as:

I won the Ychhops hop aroma challenge where there were 3 cups containing 3 different hops and people had to match each with a name from a list of 3 hop varieties. That might sound impressive until you realize that I had a 1 in 6 chance of getting it right.

Late in the day, Sam Calagiene gave the keynote address (as usual). He's a good speaker but he ran a bit longer than some folks would have liked, so a bunch of us walked to Shake Shack to lay a base ahead of the drinking we would be doing all evening. The weather was still gorgeous.

The Kickoff Party was originally slated to feature only commercial breweries. However, more than the maximum number of clubs signed up for Friday's Club Night, so almost all of the Free State Homebrew Club Guild clubs poured at the Kickoff Party so that everyone could be accommodated. Between the amateur and professional brewers, there were approximately 38 gazillion beers on tap. The professional offerings I sampled were:

  1. Ballast Point Roots to Boots Double IPA
  2. Ballast Point Victory at Sea
  3. Ballast Point Sea Wench Blackberry Ale
  4. Evolution Lot #6
  5. Avery White Rascal
  6. Flying Dog Airwaves (each attendee got a commemorative bottle of this)
  7. Samuel Adams Kosmic Mother Funk
  8. Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout
  9. Blue Earl Honeysuckle Rose
  10. Ommegang Rosetta
  11. Ommegang Gnomegang
  12. Duclaw Neon Gypsy
  13. Free Will Sour Cherry Powered Rocket
  14. Mispillion River Hawkward
  15. Mispillion River Holy Crap!
  16. Starr Hill Barrel-Aged Tripel
  17. Victory Vital IPA
  18. Waredaca 3-2-1 Gose
  19. Founders Curmudgeon Old Ale
  20. Schlafly Farmhouse IPA
  21. Schlafly Grapefruit IPA
  22. Union Steady Eddie
  23. Twin Lakes Tweeds Tavern Stout
  24. District Chop House Inverted Jenny
  25. Brewer's Art Choptank'd Saison
  26. Brewer's Art Beazly
  27. Neshaminy Creek Tribute Tripel
  28. Neshaminy Creek Kleinevriend
  29. Parkway Cock-a-Doodle Brew
  30. Peabody Heights Mocha Obscura (aged in a bourbon barrel)
  31. Gordon Biersch Belgian Dubbel
  32. Key Brewing Spot By IPA
  33. Jailbreak Poor Righteous
  34. Grail Point Priory de Saison
  35. Denizens Feels Like the First Time
  36. Denizens Third Party
  37. DC Brau The Citizen
  38. Burley Oak Gose Before Hoes (made with sea water)
  39. Southern Tier Tangier
  40. Sierra Nevada Otra Vez
  41. Dogfish Head Beer to Drink Music to
  42. 3 Stars Citra Lemon Saison
  43. 3 Stars Ghost White IPA
  44. Adroit Theory Imagination Atrophy
  45. Caboose The Zoo
  46. Tröegs Perpetual IPA
  47. Tomfoolery Crack Concrete
  48. New Belgium Yuzu

It had been a tiring day so I crashed at the hotel shortly after the Kickoff Party ended.

Friday June 10. Another beautiful sunny day. CRABS poured the early shift at Social Club. I spent the afternoon pretty much the same way as I had the day before: walking around the Homebrew Expo, socializing, and sampling both homebrews and commercial brews. Only had a few commercial brews:

Late in the afternoon I walked to my hotel room for a much-needed nap, then returned for Club Night. Apparently there was more room than they anticipated because they told the Guild clubs that we could pour beer again if we wanted to. Most of the Guild clubs did. Many of the several dozen clubs from across the nation had creative decorations and costumes. There were also quite a few nice sour ales, most notably from Seven City Brewers, CASK, TRUB, Sour Beer Blog, Krausen Commandos, Carolina Brewmasters, ANNiHiLATED, and of course CRABS.

Nice ... uh ... handle.


Barley Legal set up a jail cell and used shivs for tap handles:


One club featured a neat little gadget. See video here.

Afterward a bunch of us partied in Les and Keith's room. They had some nice beers. Keith was feeling no pain, especially after he passed out and Les decorated him with sunglasses and a Baltimore Beer Week temporary tattoo.

Saturday June 11. Hotter and more humid today. I'd found someone's drivers license on the sidewalk the night before, so I did a Google search and found a phone number associated with her and left a message. A few minutes later her husband called. We arranged to meet at Social Club when it opened. I gave him the license, and he gave me a six-pack of craft brew as a thank-you. Sweet!

After sampling several homebrews, as well as DC Brau / Cigar City Wise and Lovely Imperial Stout, I attended a Spiegelau glassware demo (as I had done in Philadelphia in 2013). They make several glassware shapes, each geared for a particular type of beer. Their glassware is thinner than pint glasses, which helps maintain carbonation and coldness. All glass is made from quartz, but it often contains impurities (such as iron oxide, which produces a slight greenish hue). Spiegelau glassware is highly pure, and this makes it more pliable and thus less breakable than normal glass. We did taste tests of 3 different beers in their glassware alongside a regular thick pint glass, and sure enough, their glassware made the beers stay cold and carbonated longer. (I wonder whether chilling the pint glass would have the same effect.) Everyone got a free set of glassware to take with them.

Went back to Social Club and walked around the Homebrew Expo until they shut it down around mid-afternoon. A while later I retrieved my reward six-pack and headed for the Grand Banquet and Awards Ceremony. Hundreds of us shared beers as we stood in line. The banquet featured 4 courses and beers from Duclaw, Port City, Flying Dog, and a few other breweries. The food was marginal and the proceedings were boring as usual, but we CRABSters made our own fun. We threw caramel corn, bottle caps, and paper airplanes at each other, and so did a lot of other attendees, once again showing that men never grow up. Of note was Joel's use of an app that put funny features on our faces. I laughed so hard that I thought my pants would never dry.

Afterward there was the annual free-for-all where the leftover beers from the National Homebrew Competition were brought out and hundreds of us consumed them in a mad frenzy.

After midnight, Joel, Trevor, and I walked to Federal Hill, which was crowded with young folks. We had pizza and beer at Pub Dog, then walked back.

Sunday June 12. Frits (who I had shared the hotel room with) and I packed up, said good-bye to a few other CRABSters who were also checking out, and returned to civilization. Next year in Minneapolis!