2009 National Homebrewers Conference Recap, Day 1

With the exception of some bullshit that happened during Pro-Brewers night, this conference and this weekend went spectacularly well. I learned a lot about homebrewing and just as much about the industry itself. I got to meet a lot of great people, taste a lot of good beer and had an excellent time. All-in-all, this event was well worth it and I am glad I decided to go.

Getting straight to the point, there’s was a lot of information I was able to take in, some better than others but a lot of information nonetheless. These series of National Homebrewers Conference Recaps will mainly focus on the sessions I attended, my notes and what I learned from each. I could spend a lot of time detailing every single thing that went on but that would bore the hell out of me recapping all of that mundane, as well as sublime and I’m sure it would bore you as well. Plus it gives me an area to focus on and for you to comment about.

The social aspect was a huge portion of this event with Pro-Brewers Night, Club Night and the Closing Gala Dinner. There was much to write about with that but I think I will let the photos speak for themselves. No need to write about how so-and-so was sooo cooool or how I so-and-so was totally drunk or whatever. My words could not do justice to all of that. It was definitely one of those, “you had to be there” sort of deals. So, as I said before, I will compile my photos and develope a slideshow you can browse at your lesiure.

2009 National Homebrewer Conference

While the official conference started off on Thursday, there were quite a few brewery tours run by various groups around the Bay Area. Unfortunately for me, I had to be at work on Wednesday and missed out. No matter. There was plenty of time to drink beers and get to know folks.

Thursday morning Sammy and I checked into NHC at around 9am-ish. I had totally thought that the first session of Thursday started at 9am and when we arrived, I mistook the lack of people for the sessions having already started. Turned out the opening toast didn’t even start until about 1:30 and the first session an hour after that. Sammy and just bummed around the Oakland Marriot City Center.

The Oakland Marriot City Center was ground zero for 2009 NHC. Attached to the Marriot hotel, it also served as the host hotel for the conference. Having booked our accommodations really late in the process, Sammy and couldn’t get a room at the Marriot. Instead we booked on Priceline.com (price, line, negotiaaator!) and booked at a Hilton that was less than 5 miles from where the action was. The distance as a non-issue as we drove ourselves around anyway.

As a convention attendee, you were asked to always carry your conference badge with you (a godsend as it allowed me to remember people’s names) which also doubled as your conference tasting glass holder. In addition to the usual paperwork you receive (program, maps, things to do, places of interest, sponsors, etc.) we were given two beers. The first is Brother Levonian Saison Ale brewed by Port Brewing out of San Marcos, CA (aka Lost Abbey). This beer was named after Dave Levonian, a homebrewer who died of cancer in 2008. The saison was his original recipe as interpreted by the brewers of Port Brewing. I’m not going to review these beers now but at a later date. Although if you want more backstory on this beer (and the next Conference beer), click here. Sippin on the Dock of the Bay IPA was brewed by Alpine Brewing Company. There’s not much of a bittersweet backstory to this beer, it’s just the Conference IPA.

Opening Toast

If I remember correctly, the opening toast was led by three people. First up was American Homebrewers Association Direction, Gary Glass. Second was by AHA founder Charlie Papazian. The final speaker of the opening toast was homebrewer extraordinaire Jamil Zainasheff. What I remember most came from Jamil’s speech. Basically, we are all attending the NHC not for the beers (gasp!) but for the community. We are all here for each other. I happen to agree with him. I’ve written many times in the past that the homebrew and craft beer community have been very embracing of new members. Some of the friends we’ve met because of the beer blog are now very dear friends of ours today. Granted, we mainly meet around beer but beer is not the reason we meet. We genuinely enjoy each other’s company, no matter if it revolves around a pint or two. If we were only about the beer at NHC, there’s no way we’d go through all the trouble and expense of being in Oakland for the conference; there’s no way we’d go through all the hassel and inconvenience of making our own beer. If it was only about the beer, we’d just go to the store and buy it. But it’s not about the beer, it’s about the people behind the beer and that’s why we’re at NHC. I’m sure Jamil was a bit more eloquent about our reasons for being there but that’s was it in a nutshell.

Wood Fermentation and Aging by Matt Brynildson

Barrel aging a beer seems to be the “in” thing to do right now. Many breweries are starting to experiment with aging their beers in used spirit (rum, bourbon, whiskey) or wine (merlot, chardonnay, pinot noir) barrels with various levels of success. While this may all seem new and exciting, in reality, barrel aging beers is the traditional way of making a beer. With all the latest advancements in brewing technology, stainless steel has made us forget about beer’s humble roots in wood and many of the cutting edge brewers are just now reminding us of why brewing beer in wood is a good thing.

Burton-on-Trent was the epicenter of pale ale brewing and wood aging. Many of the breweries in the area used a Burton Union as a way to make their beers. Simplistically put, a Burton Union was a configuration of wooden casks use to ferment beer. In many cases today, most brewers age their beers in wood, more of a final step before kegging or bottling. The Burton Union introduced wood early to the brewing process. When brewing with the Burton Union, a neutral oak was used to make the barrels as to not impart a huge amount of flavor to the beer. But why the Burton Union?

The Burton Union had a few advantages. Monks (isn’t is strange how monks seemed to be at the epicenter of all good beer?) discovered that the Burton Union created an exceptionally clear beer that could be served right from the cask. In addition, 100 BBL of beer would yield 500 BBL in yeast, this was an excellent way of producing yeast, which was collected from a trough above the fermentors. Today, Marston is the last Burton Union brewery.

Firestone Walker uses a variation of the Burton Union to brew their Double Barrel Ale. There are a few key differences between the Union system at Firestone Walker and the traditional Burton Union. The first is that Firestone Walker doesn’t harvest the yeast the process produces. Second, fermentation is initially started in stainless steel barrels before being racked into wooden barrels, which are then purged with CO2 to prevent oxidation. Firestone barrels are made from New American Oak which are medium-heavy, plus toast. Please note that the Double Barrel Ale is fermented with good old sacchromyces cervisae, or brewer’s yeast. They are not interested in the little bugs and critters that produce sour ales.

That being said, to replicate brewing with wood on the homebrew scale, you have the following options:

• staves – long, large stripes similar to barrel staves
• cubes – small solid pieces, can toast well
• chips – thin fragments
• powders – dusty with a fast reaction time

Which method works the best is entirely a matter of trial and error for the individual homebrewer’s setup, experience and goal for the beer. Keep in mind that oak comes in a variety of toast levels which impart different levels of flavor to your beer. Here’s a quick list:

• light toast – sweet, spicy oak aromas
• medium toast – vanilla, toasted bread
• heavy toast – chocolate notes, coffee, almond smoke (phenolic)

Lastly, if you will be brewing using a full-sized barrel, Matt recommends you do the following things when aging your beer:

• purge barrel with CO2 well before racking your beer into the barrel
• purge head space while sampling and moving
• “top up” barrels if evaporation is an issue. Wine makers report a 5%-10% loss each year, also known as the “angel’s share”.
• Keep things clean, sanitize the thief between samples every time
• If you’re using a used spirits barrel, the flavor of the spirit transfers best on a fresh barrel, or a barrel that was just emptied of its spirit.

Speaking of keeping things clean, here are Matt’s barrel maintenance tips:

• use it or lose it. Don’t acquire a barrel unless you intend on filling it within the week.
• hot water works the best to clean, no sterilization needed
• visual inspection and sniff test. If it smells bad, it is bad.
• SO2 (sulfur matches) will keep a barrel if you can’t fill it within a week
• CO2 purging will have the barrel last longer

All in all, I learned a lot of things about wood aging a beer and I’m looking forward to trying this on my own as well.

Brewing Great German Lagers with Michael Ferguson

This was a session I wasn’t sure I’d be interested in or not simply because I have brewed nothing but ales almost exclusively. Michael Ferguson is the Director of Contract Brewing for BJs. He got his start in brewing by working for Dan Gordon, of Gordon Biersch, at their GB1 location, better known as Palo Alto. He has always seen himself as a “lager lad” and is biased towards lagers. Since his youth, he’s since softened on this stance on ales. While is still lager-biased, he can now accept ales for being different, not necessarily better, just different. Michael is a great speaker, he’s funny and witty with a big, booming voice that reminds me of Santa. His sense of humor is shown when he said his other claim to fame was being “the other black brewer” (the inside joke being that Garret Oliver from Brooklyn Brewing Company) was the black brewer most people know about.

Homebrewing lagers has it’s own challenges. It is more time-consuming. You require more equipment. You need to have tighter temperature control, thus the necessity of refrigeration for a slow fermentation. Lastly, sulfur and DMS production is common.

Michael’s big take-away was that if you’re going to brew a lager, you might as well as brew it the right way by choosing the approprite ingredients and use the traditional methods. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it as the saying goes. The second take-away is that you “make your beer in the mash”. Translated, all the work for creating the flavors of the beer is primarily done in the mash, at least for lagers it is.

Use water that is good enough to drink. When choosing hops, keep it simple, keep it traditional, keep it noble. Of course, use a lager yeast. Lastly, use plain old Munich malt. Michael goes on to say that the development of crystal and caramels malts is because we are lazy brewers who don’t want to brew a beer using traditional methods.

In essense decoction mashing is a temperature controlled mashing method in which part of the mash is drawn off and boiled in a separate kettle before being added back to the rest of the mash. Decoction has many advantages:

• Enhances production of flavor and aroma compounds
• Reduces mash pH for better conversion and easier runoff
• Less trube in the main boil and at chilling
• Less chance of raw starch carryone to kettle
• Extracts, coagulates and precipitates tannins, proteins, and silicates (tannins are complex and some of it may drop in the decoction, thus you don’t have to be so careful with sparge temperature and pH)
• Allows thicker mash for earlier rests
• Better gelatinization of starch
• Breaks down protein matrix, thus releasing more starch and improving extraction
• It’s the traditional way to make some beers
• Darkens beer

Of course, decoction has its disadvantages as well:

• Complicated
• Requires more equipment
• Takes a lot more time
• Darkens beers (darkening through decotion was replaced through the use of crystal and caramel malts)
• Extracts tannins as grains are boiled (released tannins require long lagering to drop them out)
• Danger of scorching
• Uses more energy
• Must be careful about starch released in final decotion

In the end, I walked away with a greater appreciation of lagers and the decoction method. I realize that the rich, malt quality of some beers can only be achieved through the use of traditional brewing methods such as decoction. If anything, I’d like to give decoction a try just to see if I could pull it off or not.

This was the final session I attended on Thursday. Pro-Brewer’s night was set to start later on in the evening, around 8pm. I won’t write about this but I will post a slideshow as soon as I’ve developed it, sometime this week, promise.

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