BeerBus trip - Chicago! Saturday, June 21

SATURDAY, JUNE 21 Saturday morning came early, as today was going to be my first (and only!) day of attending seminars, and I didn't want to miss one minute of the ones I had picked out. The seminars were to start at 9am, and Trixie wanted to have breakfast with me before we split up for the day. We woke at about 8am, and went down to the hotel restaurant to have breakfast. I stuck with the breakfast buffet, since it had been so good the day before. Trixie said she was going to attend some of the afternoon seminars, but was planning to do some yoga, swimming, and sunning during the morning. It was another 75 degree, beautiful sunny day outside. As we ate breakfast, we made plans to meet at the Cheese and Beer seminar. I vowed to save a seat for her as we parted for the morning. There was a seminar that was to take all morning "BOOT CAMP FOR BREWERS", to be led by Charlie Papazian with a host of guest speakers on various topics. It looked fun, but I knew it would be very crowded, and I knew also that several other BeerBussers were planning on attending that one and could brief us on the doings there later. I also hoped that the individual Tech Topic seminars would be more in depth, so I opted to take that course instead. I made my way downstairs in the hotel to find the Water seminar, to be led by Al Korzonas, author of "Homebrewing, Volume One". I ended up sitting next to Bob Cromer (n.b.n.a - no bowling name available), and I recall remarking to him that the guy must be pretty good or else extremely cocky to name his first book "Volume One". I told Bob that I had lunch with Al and some of the other Chicago Beer Society guys at Rock Bottom Chicago when I had been there a couple years earlier for the first round AHA Nationals. Al had ordered the sampler at Rock Bottom, and had proceeded to judge and SCORE them all on his Visor handheld! (I was out on Al's website today, and he says (as of that writing) he has now judged and scored 151 commercial beers and stored them in his Visor. If you're going to be a beer author, I guess that's the thing you've got to do. Al's seminar was very informative. Brewing water is one thing I haven't really grasped beyond add a teaspoon of Gypsum to the mash, and a teaspoon of phosphoric acid to the sparge. I know logically that this is not the proper procedure for EVERY conceivable type of beer, but until now I haven't really understood the chemistry of brewing water by styles, and how I might emulate traditional brewing waters by style within my brewery. Al started out very simply, starting his lecture with what water is GOOD to brew with, and what water is BAD to brew with. His lecture and PowerPoint slides rapidly got into the whys and wherefores, and he also distributed handouts with the information he was presenting. He promised to make his Powerpoint presentation available on his website shortly after the conference, because time did not allow his printing a copy of his 25-page presentation for every attendee after he finished it at 3am that morning.... A couple of the handouts I recognized from Al's book, but a couple of them were new information. The best one, I thought, was a grid that had "YOUR WATER" across the top, in five broad categories, and STYLE down the left side, listing out almost all BJCP brewing styles. The grid was then filled in with letters ranging from A to P, with a key at the bottom relating each letter to a particular water treatment called for based on "YOUR WATER" and the "STYLE" that you were trying to brew. I have pinned that page up in my brewery, and this one chart probably has made the cost of the seminar worthwhile to me. I still can't say I totally understand ions and pH and acidity and alkalinity and hard and soft water as well as I probably should, but I have the poor man's understanding available to me now in this until that understanding strikes in fact. Al also passed around two beers, made identically except for their water, but he said that they didn't illustrate their point as well as they could have, and honestly I could not tell that much difference between the two. The next seminar I wanted to attend Saturday morning was on the Bittering Properties of Hops by Dave Wills of FresHops. It was in the same room, and as I had pretty good seats, I just stayed put. Bob Cromer (n.b.n.a) was staying put too. The first half of Dave's presentation was a slide show of various hop fields, hop types, and hop harvesting and processing equipment. It was very interesting, but I have seen these types of pictures before, and I can't help but believe that most of the people in that room already knew what hops looked like in their growing stage. The second half of Dave's lecture was more to the point - using hops in homebrewing, but it was not very practical in nature. Dave did pass around two glasses of some leftover light ales from the competition, and some hop extract he had made by boiling two different types of hops in water - Hallertau was one, and I forget what the other was - Columbus maybe? We were to put about an ounce of the extract into about 2 ounces of the beer, after first tasting the base beer, and then note the difference we perceived. More bitter and hop-flavory! Surprise! It was interesting to note the difference between the two different hops however. Dave also passed around some hop rhizomes. He said that a lot of people make a mistake when planting hop rhizomes, and plant them with the "shoots" facing down. He said the shoots are actually what will become the hop VINES, and they need to be planted facing UP. Cromer then blushed and said "Oops!" I'm sure he wasn't the only one in the room! Dave also spoke of some common hop-related problems, and some easy ways to solve them. I forget the problem (hop mite, maybe?), but he said the solution is to spray a light dishsoap and water solution on the leaves, before the hop cones start budding. The third seminar of the morning that I wished to attend, "Yeast Character and Beer Styles", was also in the same room. Taking advantage of the fact that I already had a seat (the room was now starting to be SRO), I ran around the corner to the Hospitality suite to get a beer. It was almost 11am by now after all, and all I'd had to drink so far was some doctored water beer and some doctored hop beer. Dr. Chris White, founder and owner of White Labs yeasts was to give this presentation, and there were a lot of people there for it. I was particularly interested because Dr. White was one of the people we'd discussed as a possibility for the keynote speaker of the Upper Mississippi Mash-Out competition in 2004. Chris spoke very eloquently and practically about yeast. He echoed something we'd heard a week earlier at Mid-America Malting: that if you want your beer to taste DIFFERENT from your other beers, use DIFFERENT ingredients! He said a lot of breweries (homebrewers and commercial brewers) use the same yeast culture for all of their beers. He spoke of all the different qualities of the different strains of yeast, and how they can affect your final product: flocculation, attenuation, "clean" vs. "fruity" ferments, cold (lager) vs. warm (ale) yeasts, and then - Belgians! I was interested to hear him talk about the different yeasts for Wheat Beers - how some give more perceived "banana" aroma and flavor than others, and how fermentation temperatures play a huge role in all yeast perceptions. One of the clubs (I forget which) had made several batches of beer, all with the same wort, but with many different strains of yeast. Dr. White mentioned it in the beginning, and all of the mini-kegs with the experiment were set up at the front of the room, but it wasn't mentioned again until the end, and it wasn't distributed. The line for them was so big once the talk was over that I did not try to get close to them. Darn. That would have been interesting. There was a lunch break after the Yeast seminar. I went to get another beer from the Hospitality Suite, and found one brewer had set up a table there with the results from his cider experiment. He had made 9 different ciders from the same juice, with nine different commonly used cider yeasts. He had a couple tubs of 12-oz bottles, numbered 1-9, the output of his experiment, and also had a printed sheet with the different yeasts he had used, and a few brief comments he had made regarding his perceptions of the outcome of each one. I wanted to taste them ALL, but I didn't want to bogart 9 bottles by myself, so I found a few other people who were likewise interested in trying them all, and off we went to find a table. Hank from the MhBA joined me, and about 6 of us made our way through the nine sample bottles. It was very interesting - all of the ciders were good, most of them dry. But some of them definitely had more of an "apple" character, or a "tart" character, or an "acidic" character than the others. I marked the comparison sheet with the yeasts I liked best and tucked it away with my other notes of most valuable things to bring home from the conference. I also grabbed three more bottles of the ones I liked best and took it on the lam! I went to look for Trixie, and found her doing laps in the pool. I asked her if she'd like to join me for lunch outside on the hotel patio, and she agreed. I went to the hotel snack bar and got a mini-pizza and a Rachael sandwich (which turned out to actually be a roast beef sandwich by the time I got it outside.) Hank joined us for lunch also. Trixie is a big fan of hard cider, and I proudly displayed my booty from the hospitality room for her. We shared one of the bottles over lunch, and I left the other two for her to take back up to the room. Hank and I wolfed down lunch, as it was almost time for the afternoon seminars to begin, and we were quite certain the ones we wanted - those pairing beer with different foods - were going to be very crowded. Being a fan of Emeril's on the Food Network on cable, I suggested we take front-row seats. On Emeril, it seems only the people in the front row get to sample what he is cooking! This turned out to be a wise strategem on my part, because although everyone in the seminar was going to get a sample of the "eats", the front row was going to get them first! Also, some of the leftovers were put on the front table - within easy reach of the front row.... Jay and Moe from the BeerBus were in the row directly behind Hank and me. The 1pm seminar was "Cooking With Beer", by Lucy Saunders. Lucy published a book by the same title, but unfortunately she didn't have any copies with her at the conference. Too Bad! She could've sold a few hundred of them! As we walked in the room, volunteers (including Meadmkr, from the BeerBus) were handing out appetizers which included caramelized barley and wasabi peas, amongst other things. Very mouth watering - and not ONLY because Wasabi peas contain so much MSG! Lucy spoke about the different ways you can approach cooking with food - either by pairing the food with a beer that COMPLEMENTS the dish, or else by pairing the food with a beer that CONTRASTS with the dish. Lucy had prepared a cold salad topped with Nueske's smoked duck that had been marinated in TEN BOTTLES! of New Glarus Raspberry Tart! It was delicious! Especially because we had just toured New Glarus on the BeerBus, and had tasted the beer BEFORE it had been used in cooking. The smokiness and saltiness of the duck were still present, and the sweetness and flavor of the Raspberry Tart contrasted with the duck very nicely. As I'd guessed, they served the front row first. We had one little mishap as we were passing the plates down the row - the guy I was passing to decided to fold his arms instead of continuing the passing momentum - and they came down right on a plate of salad and he ended up WEARING the salad instead of eating it! Actually, most of it was saved, and he saved that plate for himself as his fingers were picking up all the bits off his clothes and chair.... Lucy had a little audience participation - giving prizes to the first people who were able to give her "B"-word ways to cook food with beer. Braising, Baking, Basting, Broiling, ... and two others won. BOILING, however, got a big thumbs down, as she said boiling eliminates much of the beer flavor and concentrates the hop bitterness of the beer. This was a very interesting seminar - I wished it could have gone longer than an hour. The next seminar was to feature Garrett Oliver, author of "The Brewmaster's Table". I admit that I did not know much about Garrett Oliver before this seminar, other than he had appeared on Emeril Live and one or two other cooking shows. I didn't know whether he was a chef that liked beer, a brewer who liked food, or some other animal. Garrett was introduced as being the brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery in New York, and came out swinging. He spoke how we had become a nation used to eating and drinking not "real" foods and beverages, but "facsimilies". He used bread as an example, asking us how long bread lasted. The answer - a day or two. Then he asked how long "Wonder Bread" lasted - 3, maybe 4 weeks? And with holes in the bread so uniform it looked as though they had been mechanically placed there. He spoke of having pork gravy so good as a youth that it nearly gave you an orgasm, then he told us that the pigs that produced that pork are nearly extinct now, and the pork sold today a flavorless, cardboard specimen by comparison. He spoke of turkeys today being bred with breasts so large that they could no longer walk or keep themselves upright. And he spoke of beer. Of what is being advertised to us as beer. He said that he didn't become a brewer because he wanted to be a brewer. He said that he had lived in Europe for several years while in school. When he came home, he found that there was no "beer" left in America - only "facsimile" beer, a pale imitation of actual beer. The only way he could get beer like he had been drinking in Europe was to brew it himself, and that's how he got started in brewing. This resonated with me - this is EXACTLY the reason, and the conditions, that I began brewing. Garrett said he is now a representative of an organization called "SLOW FOOD" - a group extolling the shunning of "facsimile" foods and beverages, and a need to return to the Real Things. The rest of Garrett's speech was about pairing food with beer, as compared to cooking with beer. Garrett echoed what Lucy had said in her speech - that the ways to pair food and beer was to COMPLEMENT and CONTRAST. He spoke of beer vs. wine as a mealtime beverage, and how the wine people would have us believe that wine is the best complement to a good meal. He said beer is a much better choice - because beers have a RAINBOW of colors, aromas, textures and flavors from which to choose, where wine has just a wedge of that rainbow to work with. He related a story of his competition with some of the best sommelliers of New York City, where they were challenged to come up with the best food/beverage pairings, and his choices of beers with the dishes won almost every time. Garrett is a very enthusiastic and colorful speaker. All of the copies of his book were sold out at the conference, and the autograph line was very long. I would look forward to hearing him again sometime, and I'm looking forward to reading his book (I bought a copy and got it autographed.) As soon as Garrett's seminar was over, the front of the room became a mass of confusion as volunteers brought in several tables laden with nine different types of cheeses in preparation for the next seminar, "BEER AND CHEESE", to be given by Giles Schnierle, Annette May. Trixie came to join me during this seminar, as did Oomtirggg and Omahbgg. After the tables were set, many cases of different kinds of beer were brought in, and were opened and poured into glasses. As this was underway, Giles and Annette began their talk. They also spoke of the two ways to approach pairing Cheese and Beer - the COMPLEMENTARY method and the CONTRASTING method. For example, they had a smoked cheese which they paired with a smoked Rauchbier to illustrate how like tastes can be complementary. They also had an 8-year old sharp, pungent cheddar, so old that it had crystallized, that they paired with a big, sweet, malty barleywine (my FAVORITE pairing, by the way, and Trixie's too!) They handed out yet another interesting thing that definitely made the convention worthwhile - a "Wheel" of cheese and beer, produced by the Wisconsin Cheese Board, that lined up which beers make the best pairings for different kinds of cheeses. I would love to use that, with the memories I have of this seminar, to have a Beer and Cheese party sometime at our home soon! Giles and Annette cut their speech short, and released the horde to sack their bountiful beer and cheese tables. PANDEMONIUM ENSUED!! No one had figured out that getting 200 or so people past 5 or 6 tables in a very confined space with no direction or traffic flow was going to be chaos! Being 6'3", I was able to see the openings and work my way in to the spaces at all of the tables, but poor Trixie at 5'2" was swallowed like a rowboat in a hurricane. At first I tried to hand back samples of the beer and cheese to her, but I soon lost track of where she was standing in the swarming masses. To make matters worse, some people just STOOD IN FRONT OF THE TABLE sampling their beer and cheese, rather than move to the back when they had their sample. No one was killed, but it was a lucky thing! That having been said, the tasting was a marvelous success, I already expressed my favorite to you, but to mention some others they had a horseradish cheese that was paired with an ancient lambic that was a very interesting combination, some sort of creamy, milky cheese that I think was paired with an Old Ale. I can't recall the other five pairings at the moment. As the line subsided, there was some room to go back and sample your favorite cheeses, but many of the beers they had been paired with were all poured out. This seminar, despite the disorganization, was one of the highlights of the conference for me. Mmmm good! The detrius was cleared as the smoke was rising... and organization of the next seminar got underway - "Beer and Chocolate", with Fred Eckhardt. Fred is one of the Grandfathers of the homebrew movement - I had met him and had a chance to chat with him earlier in the year at the Kansas City Biermeister's 20th anniversary Homebrew Competition, and he is a charming, intelligent, and very interesting man. He is also famous for his "Beer and Chocolate" seminar, so I knew if they didn't do something different, this seminar's organization would be an even bigger "cluster" than the Cheese seminar. Fortunately, conference organizers saw the problem, and quickly learned and adapted from the earlier mistake. The last 5-6 rows of chairs were cleared out of the back of the room, and the Chocolate tables were arranged, this time, on both ends. Fred was directing the volunteers where to put each chocolate and each beer, and after he saw the change in the floor plan and a few false starts, the organization began to take shape. Fred started speaking, apologizing first that he didn't have any handouts to tell anyone which beer would be paired with which chocolates, but he said there would be a page describing each combination placed in front of the appropriate tables. With very little ado, he announced that he would be giving his lecture as we sampled his wares. And the race was on. The traffic flowed much more smoothly this time. Though there was still no direction given to the audience (ie, COUNTER-CLOCKWISE, etc), with the samples spread out around the room, there was much better access to each table. Trixie sat down after collecting her first sample to enjoy and appreciate it rather than gulp it down, and that became an opportunity for me to fetch back samples of each beer/chocolate pairing for her. (Trixie HATES crowds!) This made her much happier. I wish I could remember the beers that were being poured for tasting with each chocolate. There were fudge brownies, peanut butter cups, cream-filled truffles... it was truly marvelous. The BEST PART of the seminar though was Fred, and I'm sorry that through the din I couldn't hear all of it. Fred has collected, over the years, hundreds of the best chocolate witticisms and put them into a text that he calls, "THE RULES OF CHOCOLATE". These include such bon mots as, "If you drink beer while eating chocolate, their calories cancel each other out", and "When storing chocolate, store them up high. Calories have a fear of heights, and they will leave the chocolate and plunge to their deaths." I have vowed to email Fred and see if he would share not only his beer/chocolate pairings with me that he had at the seminar, but also the text of his "Rules of Chocolate". He should publish a book! The last conference seminar was over - only one part of the conference, remained, "REAL BEER, REAL FOOD". Also, Adolph, our driver, was due back Saturday afternoon, so I went down to the hotel front desk and made sure he had made it in safely and was registered. I called Adolph and made plans for our return trip the next day and for packing the bus. Then, a little nap was in order before the evening's festivities, and Trixie and I headed back up to the hotel room for a rest. The Real Beer, Real Food night was a part of the conference, but tickets to it were also sold separately to the general public. It was billed as vendors presenting Beer and Food pairings, and a few of them did that. It seemed that mostly there were deli's, with a LOT of sausage, cold cuts, etc, and some beer vendors scattered in between. Much of it was good, but largely "snack" type food. The bad news was that we had planned this event as our dinner for the evening. The good news was that we were still so filled from the cheese and chocolate seminar that it didn't really matter much. The REALLY bad news was that it was mostly very "gassy" food.... so much so that in an email from BeerBusser Don after our return, he offered the suggestion that attendees to the next conference wear "charcoal filtered underpants" if they were planning on hanging around people after this type of event. Good call Don! There were a few interesting items - they had a cheesecake made with beer (stout, I think, if memory serves.) The couple who did the Beer with Cheese seminar earlier in the day had a booth, and they had some of their interesting cheeses there. Rogue brewery had many beers there also. As the event drew to a close, some of us ran around and were scarfing up loose bottles and hiding them in Oomtirggg's mobile jockey box, which had somehow made it's way onto the floor. The conference committee made an announcement that they wanted to empty the Refer truck Saturday night. It would have been nice to have known this earlier, but it was no big deal. We spread the word to the BeerBussers to meet at the truck at 9pm, and I made arrangements for Adolph to bring the bus around so we could load up our kegs. Many hands make short work, and we reloaded the kegs on the bus quickly. It was actually a relief to have that part done - it would make our 9am departure Sunday morning that much easier. Oomtirggg kept his jockey box out, however, and we kept sucking on that the rest of the night. It had started acquiring a personality - Oomtirggg had begun getting signatures on it from beer personalities - Charlie Papazian, Michael Jackson, Ray Daniels, etc. I'm sure it will become a standard fixture at all future beer events in the club! Trixie retired up to the room, and I promised I would meet her up there for a late night cocktail after the bus was loaded... but one beer led to another, and after they closed up the Real Beer, Real Food room, the party migrated imperceptibly down to the Hospitality Room, which was billed tonite as the "Leftover Beer" room. There were probably 30 taps going in there, leftover sausage and cheese from the Real Beer event (which NOBODY in the room needed by now, gas-wise!), and still several hundred leftover bottles of competition beer. Ray Daniels had an experimental beer there, made with no hops, and had been fermenting it for all of 3 or 4 days. It was pretty horrid and looked milky - but he claimed that this is how all beer would have been at some point in brewing history. Three Cheers for technology!!! Let's hope we never have to revert to that! It rolled around to 1am, and OOPS! I remembered my date waiting for me upstairs! That's what happens when beer is involved! Luckily Trixie wasn't too mad at me - room service had just arrived with some shrimp cocktails and some Cosmopolitans. I know it's sacrilege, but it was nice to drink something other than beer after four solid days of drinking nothing but. So much so that we called room service and ordered another pair of them. It wasn't until I was checking out the next day that I found the Cosmopolitans, via room service, were ELEVEN DOLLARS A PIECE! Gulp! Word to your mother - next time, stick to beer!! The Cosmopolitans went down too smooth, and pretty soon it was Sunday morning.... Thus endeth the fourth day of the BeerBus trip.... NEW PICTURES posted of the trip - the "missing roll" from the beginning of the trip, including the group shot of the BeerBussers as we embarked on the tour... http://photomail.photoworks.com/sharing/album.asp?Key=1~FQQ4aBru.cIHmzZZHpV…