In the world of conferences (be they tech conferences, game conferences, librarian conferences, or, yes, beer conferences), there are generally two or three reasons to attend them: education, networking, and, usually, drinking. The latter two are often indistinguishable, although at the beer conferences I’ve attended, “drinking beer” really is its own reason. Homebrew Con, the American Homebrewers Association’s annual conference for its members that took place in Portland last month, is of course no exception, but the education and the chance to meet and compare notes with other homebrewers from around the country is invaluable.

We attended Homebrew Con for the first time in two capacities: as media for The Brew Site (for which we were credentialed and admitted as media and did not pay the attendance fee) and as members of the Central Oregon Homebrewers Organization (COHO, and for which we did initially pay full price, until we received the media credentials). I don’t know why it’s taken so long to finally attend a Homebrew Con: We’ve been members of COHO for a few years (and, years before COHO was formed in 2005, members of the region’s ur-club), and I currently serve as its president. Plus, long time readers here know that I’ve been homebrewing since the mid-1990s. So it was past due to attend.

There was indeed plenty of beer to consume: the Expo floor had vendors pouring beer, the Kickoff party the first night featured commercial brewers, the Social Club during the day (on the Expo floor) was pouring homebrew in constant rotation, Club Night on the second day featured many homebrew clubs pouring their (hopefully) finest, and the Knockout party on the final day featured the bottle remnants from the National Homebrew Competition judged that weekend.

And yes, there was beer pouring at a number of sessions, as well, usually to supplement the session topic.

However, after several weeks, what sticks with me isn’t the beer, but the education—the sessions. I feel like the sessions I attended were excellent choices, but there is still a nag of FOMO that hangs over those just based on the sheer number of possibilities on offer. With six different tracks to choose from for each block of time (two blocks on Thursday, five on Friday, and four on Saturday) there is simply no way to scratch more than the surface of the education available while you’re there.

(It helps that the AHA will be posting the presentations online, available to members, but even then that is 62 hours of video you’d have to watch if you wanted to cover it all.)

I missed two of the Friday sessions because I was pouring beer for our club during our Social Club time, but here are the sessions I did attend overall, with some thoughts.

(Note: I’m not including the keynote with Charlie Papazian here, nor the “Lessons I’ve Learned in 50 Years of Brewing” with Ken Grossman, as those were terrific retrospectives but not education sessions as such. I may have some thoughts about them in a separate post.)

Understanding National Tradition with Jeff Alworth.

This was a terrific opener, essentially a live supplement to his most recent book, The Secrets of Master Brewers. Jeff talked about exploring the beer traditions of other regions and nations in order to improve your own brewing of those styles. In other words, understanding the whys of how German beers came to be will help you learn to brew them better and more authentically. Jeff covered German and Belgian brewing traditions as his examples; here are my takeaways from those:

• Both involve (minor) step mashing, which requires all grain brewing.
• In German brewing: learn to brew pilsner; then you can brew anything. (This is essentially how German brewers are trained.) Characterful malts and low hopping rates (no late hopping) are key.
• In Belgian brewing: don’t be afraid of adding sugars, other grains — even a cereal mash might be worth considering. Longer boils and yeast are key here — and refermentation in the bottle (bottle conditioning) is mandatory.

Spruce Beer Two Ways: Experiences from West Virginia and Oregon with Ted Huffman.

This was a fascinating session on forageable ingredients, specifically spruce tips from Sitka spruce in Oregon and red spruce from West Virginia. Beer was poured at this session to highlight both, but there was a (semi-major) snafu: Ted wasn’t able to get red spruce from his old club on the east coast in time (it doesn’t start budding until mid-June or so), so instead he brewed a beer using Douglas fir tips in its place. In fact, you can use fresh budding tips from quite a number of similar trees.

The Sitka spruce beer offered a hint of green tree character but wasn’t piney, instead seemed to offer subtle wood/resin flavors with fruity notes. The Douglas fir beer was similar to my taste but softer and with more of a candy sweetness with some spicy character and no wood notes at all. Both beers were based on a fairly neutral Scottish ale recipe. And, we sampled some raw spruce tips as well—they were surprisingly tart with a citrusy note, a touch pitchy, and pungent like a fresh hop. Not what I was expecting, but then again they are full of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) so tart makes sense.

Hints for brewing: use anywhere from four ounces to two pounds of spruce tips for a five gallon batch, and add them early in the boil as they are not like hops—longer boiling extracts the maximum flavor and aroma.

Burton Ale with Bill Schneller.

This was both history and brewing education, as Bill did a deep dive into the history of Burton ale and guidelines on brewing it (actually, guidelines for brewing it at various stages in its history). Fascinating topic, and two points I noted:

• Invert sugar is an important ingredient to the style, as it adds color as well as dries out the beer and gives it a distinctive flavor component. Invert sugar along with crystal malts should be used for color, but roasted malts should not be used.
• Bill pointed out that all traditional English ales should be brewed with dark invert sugar.

I also liked his slide on “Caveats on Brewing Historical Beers.”

The Style Hunter with Gordon Strong.

Gordon is the principal author of the BJCP guidelines, as well as “the president and highest-ranking judge in the Beer Judge Certification Program” so it was fascinating to hear him talk about the process of how new styles get added to the guidelines. He offered up six new possible styles, four of which have officially been added to the provisional style guidelines which homebrew competition organizers can optionally include:

1. New England IPA
2. Grisette
3. New Zealand Pilsner
4. Burton Ale (ironic since I had just attended that session!)
5. Mexican Lager
6. Catharina Sour

In fact styles 1, 3, 4, and 6 above were just recently added to the BJCP provisional guidelines, which you can view on the dev site. Why provisional? Because the goal of the BJCP is to only release new and updated guidelines every five years or so, but they recognize that new styles are evolving and cropping up that many homebrewers want to know more about. These provisional guidelines provide something of a compromise.

And yes, Gordon himself travels to discover and research these styles, hence the “Style Hunter” which he self-deprecatingly chuckled about. I wouldn’t hate that job.

Stump the Experts Panel.

Rather that a single presentation, this was a discussion panel with beer/homebrew experts Jamil Zainasheff, John Palmer, and Mike “Tasty” McDole, and it was a straight Q&A session. While it was an interesting panel, many questions posed were specific to a given person’s circumstances and really didn’t apply to me. There were a couple of tidbits I did pick up however that I plan to follow up on:

• Gentle boil — there was made mention of “head loading” the wort during boil, that it was unnecessary/should be avoided, opting for a gentle boil instead. My understanding is the conventional wisdom calls for a vigorous rolling boil to drive off any DMS precursors, so my curiosity here is definitely piqued.
• Fruit beer — Jamil mentioned that in making fruit beers, he now ferments the fruit by itself, separately, and then adds it to the beer, rather than adding the fruit directly to the beer for a secondary fermentation. He says he finds better results with that method. Intriguing, and something I’m going to have to try. (No mention of whether he pitched yeast, or let the fruit ferment spontaneously.)

The XXX Story of Australian Old Ale with Peter Symons.

Another style session covering a distinctive Australian style, though not one I’d seen generally recognized. Peter walked us through a history of the style, including one historic bit of trivia I scribbled down: there was an 1830’s Australian “sugar beer” that was apparently 100% less prone to infection—probably because the recipe used 57% sugar in the fermentables!

Because Australia was a (poor) penal colony, ingredients were scarce, so sugar beer was a thing. The use of sugar tapered down over time.

The other detail that caught my attention was the fact that the Australian Amateur Brewing Championship organization uses its own set of beer style guidelines, based on the BJCP 2015 guidelines! They are organized differently by category but the core BJCP styles are there, as are styles specific to the Australian homebrewing scene, such as Australian Lager, Australian Bitter Ale, and yes, Australian Dark/Old Ale. This was an eye-opener for me, particularly in line with Gordon Strong’s session on (provisional) styles. I now want to hunt down style other alternative style guidelines to compare/contrast and build upon.

(Unfortunately I did not get any pictures from this session.)

Hops Hops and How to use Hops with Ted Hausotter.

Ted, from Baker City, Oregon, is one of the most knowledgeable homebrewers I know and this was an informative talk on hops—flavor profiles, evaluation, brewing techniques, storage, and more. Ted supplemented his talk with two beers he brewed, an English dark mild and a pilsner, both highlighting hops pertinent to his discussion.

I wrote down a quote from this session that didn’t pertain specifically to hops but gives a good highlight of Ted’s way of thinking: “Most recipes out there [in books and online]… they’re not good, that’s why they’re published. A good recipe is for yourself.”

And, a note on late-hopping techniques and calculating IBUs. You do get IBUs from hops added to the whirlpool, even if you don’t boil them, but Ted gave the first idea on how to determine the contribution that I’ve seen: for 15 minutes of whirlpool time, calculate the IBUs based on 5 minutes of boil time for that amount of hops.

And his “whirlpool” technique for most homebrewers who can’t actually, well, whirlpool: at flameout, add the hops and let them sit for 15 minutes and steep; don’t start chilling the beer until after that step.

Overall it was a great conference that I really enjoyed, and aside from the beer itself I feel there was plenty to learn and absorb. In particular I’ve been think a lot about beer styles since getting back, which I’m sure will be a topic of writing here soon. The quality of the sessions I attended were excellent and I’ll recommend attending Homebrew Con going forward.