Chicago Trip Recap

The Trip <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> The alarm clock squealed at 4:15 in the morning for the big trip to the National Home brewing Conference. I had put together my traveling supplies the night before our 9:30 soccer game, so I was going on fumes at this point with a big four hours of sleep. I had placed a six pack of my home brewed Superior Strong Ale in the refrigerator to get ready for the first ever AHA sanctioned traveling homebrew competition. Since glass was not allowed on the bus, I had to sanitize a plastic 2-liter bottle to transport the beer. I wearily opened each bottle and began to pour and wait while the head of the beverage slowly faded from the top of the beer. After about 15 minutes I had an opaque bottle of ale. I was hemming and hawing between entering it as an old ale or a Scottish Ale, ultimately I chose to go with the old ale due to the happier character. I knew I pretty much had no chance in winning the competition with the great brewers in our club making the trip, but it was expected that everyone bring an entry. Plus, more beer for the bus. I threw my luggage in the Accord and made my way the five miles to Midwest brewing. I already saw that there were about 10 guys there unloading their cornie kegs, but no bus. I unloaded my stuff as more and more cars made their way into the parking lot. When the bus ultimately arrived we had 18 5-gallon kegs waiting to be loaded onto the bus. The sight was amazing. When you have an average of 5-8 hours to brew a batch of beer on average including bottling, that was a lot of "Work" in front of me. Our bus driver was named Adolf, and he had seen a cigarette or two in his lifetime, but he seemed like a nice, elderly man. The bus began our trek to Chicago at 5:30 like Al had planned, and the competition began about 5:45. After about 3 or 4 hours we had worked our way through 21 two-oz. samples of beer and mead and had judged them. I found out later towards the end, people were just putting down total scores, rather than parsing them out between sub-categories. I decided to split my scores out though, as I am still working on the nuances of judging. Chris Hadden had a mead that was raspberry and ginger and this thing was amazing! It was the only two liter bottle that didn't make it all the way around the bus for seconds. Where it disappeared to is still a mystery to me. I knew that this was going to take best of show, since the competition was not split between beer and meads. You were basically up against twenty other beverages. Curt Stock's friend had made three super cool trophies for first, second, and third and a best of show recurring bowling pin trophy was emblazoned by Kris England with a Sharpie pen. The name was of course Chris Hadden with a bunch of best of show votes. Chris even brought along a keg of this mead, which was originally made for mead day, but Chris had decided to bring it along for the trip. We also decided to have a roulette style game where we divided the bus tire into 25 sections and for one dollar you could pick a section of tire for the next stop. If your number was pointing up, you are the winner! No luck for me though. John Longballa won on two of the stops. I am suspecting a fix. On our way through Wisconsin came the first film. One of such high importance and cinematic pride it heralds with that of Casablanca and Psycho. That's right it was Strange Brew. I had forgotten what a goofy movie this was. Many scenes had the bus rolling with laughter, especially the first half. We finished her up right before lunchtime. Our first stop was at a brewpub in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. Brewery Creek Inn is a little bed and breakfast in an old building and I have heard the rooms are very cool, with hot tubs and fireplaces. The food we got were mostly pasties. Kind of like a potpie that looks like a calzone. I got the chicken one and it was very reminiscent of David Cross on Just Shoot Me. Very tasty, and I had a couple of samples of our brew master's local concoctions. Pretty good stuff. It turns out that Jeff Donaghue, the proprietor and brew master used to be in our club, and was actually one of the founders. Jeff also gave us a tour of his brewery. He had some pretty good size, custom made mash tuns, and it was a home brewers dream. Jeff mentioned that he didn't need to brew that often and one week he sold only nine gallons of beer. Now that is a small town, especially when you have your own local brews right there. After an hour at the brew pub, Al rounded us up to get back on the bus with full bellies and a few more beers. Here is the Brewery Creek Inn's website. http://www.brewerycreek.com/ Some people have stayed there and have really liked it. As we rolled through Wisconsin, it turns out our bus driver needed a break so we stopped at a gas station. What goes great with gas stations? That's right, fireworks. Some bus riders decided to shoot off a couple of fountains on the corner of Main Street in whatever town we were in. We were soon off to New Glarus brewery. Brewers of the best fruit beers I have tasted. Their Raspberry Tart could be one of the best beverages I have ever tried. I am now sorry I only picked up one bottle of it. Some other riders were buying it by the case. New Glarus is a smaller operation that is only distributed throughout Wisconsin I believe. They had to pull out of Chicago because the demand was too great for their product. Interestingly enough their fruit beers are only like 5% of their sales. That number blew us all away. Here is their website http://www.newglarusbrewing.com/ Again, their fruit beers are AMAZING! When we got to the brewery, we all got off the bus and paid our 4 dollar admission fee for the tour and tasting. It seemed to be a fairly slow operation. Compared to the "Big boy" tours I have taken, the bottles seemed to be packed at about 6 cases per minute. But we did get to see the barrel where they ferment the fruit beers. Dan Carey, the brew master, was NOT divulging any secrets to us about how they get the flavors they do. His wife Deborah said that they still had kids in college and could not give away any proprietary secrets. After a voted on 30 minutes at New Glarus, we were off to Chicago and viewed the film The Blues Brothers. I caught some mini-naps during the movie since I was still running on only a few hours sleep, and I knew we would be up until 1 or 2 on the pre-conference pub crawl. I did wake up to see Aretha Franklin singing Respect in the diner. One of my favorite scenes in the movie. We got to Chicago about 4:30 PM to check into the O'Haire Holiday Inn. Kerry checked in and gave me my key and it was off to get ready to wait until 6:30 for the "El" train pub crawl. It was about a 15 minute walk to the train station in the rain which pretty much sucked, but it was my first time riding the Chicago train and we were off to a much needed dinner at Chicago's Rock Bottom. It was about a 35 minute trip into the city and pretty uneventful. We made a transfer and ended up right in front of Rock Bottom. They had a buffet ready for us and we got all the beer we wanted. They had some great chipped kind of chicken breast, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. I loaded up on the chicken and broccoli. Rock Bottom then pulled out a newly tapped barley wine, which I wasn't too impressed with, but as always I really liked their Red ale. I sat with one of the BJCP board members, and we talked with each other about how the MHBA runs a 14 week beer judging class and some changes they were thinking of implementing. After Rock Bottom, it was off to the original Goose Island Brewpub. This place was awesome. Nice wood décor everywhere and a ton of beers on tap. It soon was apparent that it would be cheaper and more efficient to get 3 sampler glasses for 5 bucks. They had a bourbon barrel aged stout that was just fantastic. I also had some honker ale. After playing pool and hanging out in our own little banquet room, it was off to the Map Room. The Map room is renowned for its vast selection of beers on tap. The group eventually got there after some walking and I was starting to get tired so I didn't order anything here and decided to get on the shuttle home because I knew I wanted to wake up before the conference started to go see Sears Tower. I woke up about 9 and decided I had just enough time to get back downtown via the "El" and see the Sears Tower. This skyscraper was immense. After crossing the Chicago river and paying the 9 bucks to take the fast elevator ride to the observation deck and seeing the Hancock building, Wrigley Field, Soldier field, and Comisky way below me and taking some pictures from what they say is the tallest building in the world, it was back on the train. One more thing I wanted to do in my life checked off. Now if I could have only gotten into Wrigley Field. The only Chicago landmark that's left on the list. I arrived just in time for the Kick-off lunch. Michael "The Beer Hunter" was to be the keynote speaker and he welcomed everyone with a speech about some of his travels and experiences while writing about beer. Charlie Papazian also welcomed us with a nice little speech. Lunch was a nice 4 course meal with salad and soup and a nice entrée and dessert. All in all the food at the convention was all great, as well as the service. Top notch. One of the meals had two hunks of meatloaf that must have weighed a third of a pound apiece. It was insane. I stopped after one. Mashed potatoes were yummy though. Our club usually sat together and meals were a nice place to get together and laugh and talk about that day's experience. The seminars began at 1:30 and so did the fantastic hospitality suite which was sponsored a couple of hours at a time by a club. There were snacks and some vendors and all the beer you could ever want free flowing. So I grabbed a 4 oz. sample of something and went off to the Cider presentation. I am currently attempting my first cider, which has turned out super dry. But I picked up some good tips on doctoring it and how to stop fermentation when you are ready to taste it. After the cider presentation I decided to grab a beer and go back to the room for a quick nap, since I was less than thrilled with the cider presentation and sake was next. Not being too interested in making rice wine, sleep sounded real good. I slept through the wine presentation as well, but not mead. Ken Shramm, who has a great new book, The Complete Meadmaker, available on Amazon. I got my copy signed and learned a bunch about making honey wine. I currently have an 18 lbs. Batch going strong at home, and it is about a month old. I can't wait, but I have heard you need to give them at least 6 months, but with 18 pounds, I think I will give it a year. Chris Hadden's winning mead from the bus contest was a year old, so I'll use history as an extrapolation point. I loved this talk and went back for another nap before the best event of the whole conference began. CLUB NIGHT! At 7 pm I walked into ballroom sized hall and saw a horseshoe like spread of tables lining the walls with banners from about 30 different clubs. Each club was supposed to have some kind of theme and bring lots of beer. Whoever brought the most beer won an award. There was also an award for the peoples' choice for club presentation. Somehow we received 540 of the votes, and there were 600 attendees and 1,000 ballots. I wonder how that happened. Anyway, we won a cool shot up cornie keg for winning the most popular club booth award. Some other clubs that were notable included a club that used prison as their theme. They all dressed up in their black and whites and had a mini jail. My favorite besides ours was a replica M*A*S*H* tent with some real cool army related stuff, even some kind of M*A*S*H beer. Our club's booth was by far the coolest though. We had a bowling theme to go along with our cool bowling shirts. Matt Peterson organized the purchasing of the coolest club shirts ever. We all chose a "Bowling" name to embroider on the shirt, mine was "Jay" and we had a cool logo on the back with our club logo on a bowling ball, knocking down three bowling pin designed, beer bottles. We could then choose which colors we wanted. I chose black with yellow highlights. It turned out great. Also at our booth was an unbelievable jockey box with four copper colored bowling pin tap handles made by Curt Stock. In addition, we had the Big Lebowski and bowling training videos playing on a portable television. Rice Krispy treats shaped like bowling pins added to the bowling flavor and we even had meatballs and some mini bowling lanes. Then began the fun. There was beer and food everywhere. There were ribs, and pates, sausages, dips, pulled pork, basically if you thought of it, someone had brought it. Then there were the 300 kegs people had brought with them. Any type of beer you could ever think of was represented. So we spent three hours laughing, voting, and eating. A fantastic time. At one time Ken Schramm was opening up 11 year old meads and one that he opened made the cork fly into the air, and a solid stream of honey wine flew vertical into the ceiling. It was one of the craziest things I have ever seen. I did get to try some of his other mead though, and it was fantastic. At 11, it was time for bed. As the seminars started at 9 the next morning. On my way to my first seminar I overheard from a patron at another conference, "They must have less alcohol in homebrew. There is a lot of it here." I kind of laughed to myself upon hearing that one. Then came the members only lunch, which was good, but before it was over a couple of us left to get ready for the Belgium speeches. We had a fantastic speaker from Belgium, Peter Bouckart, from New Belgium Brewing Co. in the afternoon. He was very funny and down to earth. He showed us all the different ways and how to brew Belgium beers. This was a two hour long presentation, so I went back to the hospitality suite and then back to my room for a wonderful nap before dinner. Next was the Grand Banquet. Here is where all the national awards were going to be given out. Three hours later and 4 courses later, Steve Piatz had walked away with two medals from the National. His mead and his Belgium had won. Saturday at 9 began the coolest days of all the seminars. At 9 AM Charlie Papazian marched in with his drill sergeant hat sunglasses on. Thus began boot camp for brewers. We had a range of speakers talk about ingredients, mashing, sanitation, bottling, yeast. Then at 12:30 Michael Jackson came in and gave a great speech about while judging beers, often times judges are only looking for faults in beers. He urged people to find the good things about a particular beer. There was no planned luncheon, so I snagged some salmon and horseradish dip and some beer from the hospitality suite and waited to go to a cool food tract. First up was Cooking with beer, by Lucy Saunders, www.beercook.com, she had prepared a smoked duck that had marinated in New Glarus Rasperry Tart. The good stuff. She said she put 8 bottles of the stuff in there. I couldn't taste the beer characteristics too much, but other people said they could. We got some Hungarian paprika, and she did make an awesome couscous with the stuff, that I absolutely loved. Next up was a seminar by Garrett Oliver which was super cool. Garrett has appeared on Emeril's show often, and he had a new book out that sold out at the convention. It was a huge book and a lot of people in the club picked it up, as well as Ken Shramm's mead book. (It seemed like everyone on the bus was reading the mead book on the way home.) Anyway, Garrett was super laid back and gave a great speech about how beer goes a lot better with food than wine. He gave a great analogy of the range in flavor of wine is very small, but with beer, you could go from super sweet, to super sour, like a lambic, to smoky, like a Rauchbier. Then he spoke about how he challenged some wine taster to pair certain foods with wine, and he guaranteed he would choose a better beer to go with the food. He won every time. Next up was Beer and cheese. This was a very popular session. They had nine different cheeses paired with nine different beers. It was great. They had some smoked cheese paired with a Rauchbier. There was a fantastic horseradish cheese, there was some 8 and 9 year old sharp cheddars with crystals in them that were fantastic. There was Brie and each one was just fantastic with the beer they matched it with. Just a fantastic session. The only complaint is that they had all the cheese at the front of the room so it was very crowded trying to get around. The next session was beer and chocolate. This was just like the above session, except they had it spread out all around the room, so it was much more comfortable. There were some Belgium chocolates. Lots of imperial stouts mixed with the chocolate. The godfather of beer, Fred Eckhardt read chocolate facts the whole time while people were sampling the items. It was very funny, and Fred seemed like a really cool guy. After this session I went back to the room for a nap and to get ready for the Real Beer, Real Food night session. This was a gathering of about 15 breweries and 15 delis and restaurants and more sausage than you could ever imagine. It was pretty tough to find something even remotely healthy for food. There were some real good beers here, and I got to taste a real good Belgium Lambic. After lots of laughs, it was time to head back because roll call was 8:30 AM for the bus ride home. I packed away my bottle of commemorative mead and aged stout. Sunday morning I woke up at 8 AM and we checked out and got loaded onto the bus. I think we were all a little hopped out, because everyone had coffee, or soda, or water in their grips. We started the Big Lebowski and I got reacquainted with "The Dude" We then arrived in Madison and went to a great brewpub called Great Dane. I had some fantastic chicken enchiladas with a couple of awesome cherry ales and discussed mead making with my fellow tablemates. We spent two hours for lunch and made our run for Minneapolis and watched the Farrely Bros. Great bowling movie Kingpin. Everyone seemed ready to get home and get back to "Real" life. At 7 PM I got home, unloaded the bus, and went to mow my lawn. All in all, one heck of a trip.