BeerBus trip - Chicago! Thursday, June 19

ADDENDUM TO WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18: * For those curious, Russell won the WHEEL O'FUN the first TWO spins... definitely suspicious! (The second Wheel O'Fun wagering occurred at the Brewery Creek Pub.) THURSDAY, JUNE 19 Since we had already unloaded the bus the night before, we thankfully got to sleep in on Thursday morning! The first event of the day was the Welcome Luncheon, which started at noon. There was already quite a line (actually, several lines) forming when Trixie and I got down there, so I took the opportunity to pass out most of the Beer Bowling Scoresheets that we had printed for the event. The scoresheets were 11x17 full color forms and had a conference schedule down the right side of them, and logos from the larger Minnesota brewing clubs, Breweries, Homebrew shops and Brewpubs around the outer edge. The rest of the form was a regulation bowling score sheet for four people, and it divided up the conference activities into the "frames" listed below. The vigor of your participation would measure your "Beer Bowling" score. ANY FRAME: STRIKE! If total is 11 or more! FRAME: 1 WEDNESDAY NIGHT PUB CRAWL! First Half: Number of bars visited Second Half: Total number of beers sampled 2 THURSDAY KICKOFF LUNCHEON! First Half: Total food items eaten Second Half: Drink each time Jackson says: "BeerHunter!" 3 THURSDAY JUDGING / CONFERENCE SESSIONS First Half: Flights judged or sessions attended Second Half: Beers tasted in the Hospitality Suite 4 THURSDAY CLUB NIGHT! First Half: Number of food dishes tried (Max: 5 pts) Second Half: Number of beers tried 5 FRIDAY MORNING JUDGING / CONF. SESSIONS First Half: Flights judged or sessions attended Second Half: Beers tasted in the Hospitality Suite 6 FRI MEMBERS LUNCH / AFTERNOON SESSIONS First Half: One point for Lunch, One for each afternoon session Second Half: Beers tasted in the Hospitality Suite 7 FRIDAY GRAND BANQUET First Half: Total food items eaten (Max: 6 points) Second Half: Number of beers drank during banquet 8 SATURDAY MORNING SESSIONS First Half: Sessions attended Second Half: Beers tasted in the Hospitality Suite 9 SAT. BEER, FOOD AND MORE BEER SESSIONS First Half: Sessions attended Second Half: Beers tasted in the Hospitality Suite 10 SAT NIGHT: REAL BEER, REAL FOOD First Half: Food/Beer pairings tasted (Max: 10 points - STRIKE) Second Half: Beers drank in the Hospitality Suite AFTER 11PM! (10-Strike!) TurkeyOut - AWARDS! - Must have 10 or 11 in Frame 10! 10: You won GOLD! 8: You won SILVER! 6: Bronze! 4: Your club won something 2: You SURVIVED to Sunday Morning! People seemed amused by it, and it gave our club a little advance publicity for our Bowling-Themed Club Night. I don't know if anyone actually kept score with it. I started to for the first few frames, but I was having so much fun at the conference that I forgot that I was supposed to be scoring! The lunch was tasty, but I've already forgotten what was served. I do remember that Goose Island had brought in 4 kegs of beer for the event, and they were all dry before the luncheon was over. We listened to Charlie Papazian speak about 25 years in the AHA, and then he introduced Michael Jackson (the BeerHunter one, not the MoonWalker one). Our Beer Bowling scoresheet, we were soon to discover, should have given points for every time Michael rambled off topic instead of every time he said "BeerHunter"! But his anecdotes and stories all wound together eventually, and it was a very enjoyable and entertaining talk. Lunch ran late, so the Thursday afternoon events were all pushed back a half hour, starting at 2pm instead of 1:30. I decided I was going to judge Thursday afternoon instead of attending any of the seminars. I was happy with my choice, but after hearing some of the other BeerBussers stories about the seminar topics, I am kind of sad I missed them. They included: * Introduction to Beer Judging, with Rex Halfpenny * Mastering the BJCP Exam, with Gordon Strong * Planning a Doctored Beer Seminar, with Tom Fitzpatrick * Alternative Fermentations: Sake, with Fred Eckhardt * Alternative Fermentations: Mead, with Ken Schramm * Alternative Fermentations: Cider, with Charles McGonegal * Alternative Fermentations: Wine, with Rick Wilson ...and... * Dr. Ed's House of Bad Beer Horrors! (a room dedicated to tasting beers with known flaws, for developing your palate.) and also the following clubs in manning the Hospitality Suite: * Midnight Carboys, IL * North Texas Homebrewers Association * SAAZ, OH Orville and I both got assigned to judge Fruit Meads, which made me happy - that was the category I had requested. We looked at the roster of meads we had to judge, and I got a little freaked out when I saw that there were EIGHTEEN OF THEM at one table!!! Orville explained that there were 6 judges at the table, and the norm is to break into groups of 3 and run 2 flights of 9 at the table simultaneously, each flight picking their top 2-4 selections. Then we were all to judge the final 4-8 beers in a Mini-Best Of Show round. One team took all the cysers while the other took all the pyments, then each team took some of the "other" fruit meads. Orville, Cindy (a brewer from Hawaii!) and myself took the Pyments, and Joel Plutchark (sp?) and two others whose names have escaped me took the Cysers. I was happily amazed by the QUALITY of meads we judged! Any one of them could easily have taken a gold medal in any other contest I have judged. After much discussion, we settled on a Muscat Pyment for first in our flight, a Raspberry melomel for second, and I forget the third. The other flight had four - two cysers, a Strawberry/Crabapple, and I forget the last one. The mini BOS was arduous - one of the judges had set his favorite on a cyser that the rest of us had lower on our lists, and the same judge heatedly disliked the Muscat pyment that the rest of us loved. It really was a chore to throw any of them out! Eventually we sent the Muscat on as first, the raspberry as second, and the strawberry/crabapple on as third. The Metheglin judging table that Tjockis was judging at was already out when we got done, and Kris had saved us some samples of 1,2 and 3 at that table. It's good to have friends! The Traditional/Varietal table that Marty was sitting at was still going on - and I avoided it with great difficulty, since both Orville and I had meads entered in that category. When they were finally finished, we shared our remnants of our winners with Chris and he shared the remnants of their placers with us. I got excited because two of the meads that placed were very familiar to me... more about that later. Most of the seminars were over by the time the judging let out, so I picked up a copy of Ken Schramm's new mead book, and stood in line with Kathy Stock for Ken to autograph them. It was moving on to 6:15pm and it still wasn't over, so I gave up on the autograph line and went upstairs to get the stuff I had stored there for our Club Night table. The setup for Club Night began at 6:30pm. Club Night is the night when all of the AHA brewer's clubs put on their best show to the assembled delegates. Our theme this year was bowling - for no other reason that we decided that bowling shirts would be cooler to have than T-shirts. Tjockis had suggested them, and Yarrrr! had found beershirts.com and had coordinated the deal with them, and collected all the orders from our club. The shirts were classic tacky bowling shirts, each BeerBusser picking their own color and adornments. Trixie and I had chosen the Black and Pink Loungemaster variety. All of them had our logo on the back - a bowling ball with the MhBA logo in it, knocking over several 22-oz beer bottles, with the slogan underneath "MhBA can knock 'em down!" Gloria Sheehan from our club did the art, and Yarrr! came up with the slogan and the art idea. We were stylin'! Well, once we had the shirts, we had to do the rest of the theme in bowling style as well. Russell was our Club Night coordinator, and Orville was the overall beer coordinator. We had a variety of "balls" to eat: Meat, Malted Milk and donut variety, as well as some rice krispy treats in the shape of pins. The beers all had bowling names - mine were "Powerbowler Pilsner", "Gutterball" Steam beer, and "Alleywaxer IPA". Orville (or was it Russell?) made these great, laminated beer menus that allowed our booth visitors to ask for their request by number -making bartending much easier. Moe organized all the kegs in numerical order - about halfway through the night - and that made it easier still. The king of Easy was Oomtirggg though - his four-tap jockey box sat on wheels in the middle of the floor in front of our booth, and allowed peole to pour their own. Tjockis created quite a stir when he put a 40-lb back of fresh Cascade leaf hops and a box of baggies next to Oomtirggg's jockey box with a sign saying "FREE - TAKE SOME!" Some brewers just wanted to stick their heads in the bag and inhale, others took a few in their palms to sniff and examine. A few less savory characters made 8 or 10 trips to the hop bin. And one woman had to be told not to throw her TRASH into the bag! (Must have been a "guest" - not a brewer! Sheesh!) Our meads and ciders, it seems, were the hit of the conference for their quality and quantity. We had our own little mead/cider groupies, who kept coming back for more and more. One person took a sip of my Tupelo mead over to mead book writer Ken Schramm to taste, and she said "his eyes rolled back in his head". (I'm hoping it was in a GOOD way!) Marty also had a whopping supply of mead on hand for Club Night - including a KEG! of his Raspberry Ginger Melomel. After he won first place and people's choice on the Beer Good Bus Tour contest, we nearly didn't let him serve it that night! Joe Formanek, club night organizer, got on the PA and invited us to "Vote Early, Vote Often - Chicago Style"! for our favorite booth. That was all the impetus we needed! Hank went over to where the ballots were stored and grabbed a couple handfuls of them and we proceeded to set up an assembly line to stuff the ballot box. Every 20th ballot or so we wrote in "Mayor Daley" or some other famous dead Chicagoan, but otherwise we mostly voted for ourselves. A few people noticed the stuffing, and soon the race began for which club could stuff it the most! Trixie expressed disappointment because she thought we could win the "Big Al" trophy without cheating, and now we would never know. All in fun! The food and beer was fabulous! Prairie Homebrewing Companions had Buffalo Balls (!!!) and Sunflower treats - produce from their homeland. The Kansas City Biermeisters had BBQ Ribs in keeping with their tradition. F.O.R.D. had cabbage rolls - don't know how that ties in, but it was VERY good! We also sampled some of Jeff Renner's Classic American Pilsner. Jeff is a prolific contributor to the Homebrew Digest online, and is credited with having popularized, if not having started, the revival of the style. It was very good - almost as good as mine! ;-D The promised song-and-dance routine of Tjockis and the Three Idiots Brewers never materialized, much to the disappointment of the crowd. There was talk that they would make it up to us in the MhBA stint in the Hospitality Suite on Friday.... stay tuned for more on that. The room had to be closed by 11pm, so soon the clubs started packing up their beers to the "Refer" truck and stowing all their gear and food. Oomtirggg's bar-on-wheels somehow managed to follow us down to the Hospitality room after the event however, and joined by the beers of the Chicago area clubs - the Brewers of South Suburbia, the Chicago Beer Society, and the Urban Knaves of Grain, we proceeded to taste our way into heavenly oblivion. I must've went to bed sometime that evening, but I don't remember when! Thus endeth the second day of the great AHA National Conference of 2003... I have added some more pictures to the photo album... - Al http://photomail.photoworks.com/sharing/album.asp?Key=1~FQQ4aBru.cJA9u5CX3N…