Author: The Rabid Brewer
One of the year’s largest gatherings of homebrewers is happening this September in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada when the Northern California Homebrewers Festival (NCHF) celebrates its 13th year.
The Festival takes place at Lake Francis Resort in Dobbins (near Marysville) where the entire campground is reserved for festival goers. (The resort also has a limited number of cabins available.) This year promises a packed event with less than 100 sites still available out of 350 total. It’s expected the event will sell out by the end of the month.
A full schedule of activities is planned including live music, raffles, nationally recognized speakers, a club only homebrew competition, and a Friday Night Brewers Dinner. And, what kind of beer festival would it be without beer? Rest assured that the festival will be literally overflowing with homebrew from clubs and individuals alike.
Every year the Festival follows a theme and this year it is Eastern Europe. Expect many clubs to have booths following the theme, but as with past festivals, anything goes!
Clubs often spend months planning to make a good showing at the festival and will pull out all the stops to have a creative display and plenty of homebrew on tap. Clubs also compete in the club-only competition and this year the featured styles are Baltic Porter and Bohemian Pilsner.
The only downside of this year’s festival is that it occurs on the same dates as this year’s Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Unfortunately that means no NCHF for me. These two events don’t always overlap and organizers try hard so that they wont. But, due to having to make firm commits on reservations for the festival before the GABF dates are announced, there is always the possibility of a conflict such as happened this year.
The other minor effect of this overlap is that Sean Paxton the Homebrew Chef (who in the past has prepared the Friday Night Beer Dinner) will instead be off at GABF. I doubt that will prevent NCHF from having tons of excellent food though. Check out the menu on their site.
If you’re a homebrewer looking for an amazing event to be a part of, you can’t go wrong with NCHF. Check out their website for complete information and to see more photos of past events (from which all photos in this post were gleaned.)
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