Beerstock 5060-2

Last weekend I attended Beerstock 5060 which is a homebrew festival started last year to celebrate a change in the law that allowed homebrew to be transported and served at meetings and such. Just 150 of you closest friends out for a day of beer and camping. I went as a memeber of BREW, but decided to also look at other homebrew clubs to see if I liked one a bit closer to me, but more on that later.

This was the first event I attened like this. I guess it is a bit like club night at NHC but on a smaller scale and camping. There were 7-8 clubs there with thier own booths and each serving 5-6 beers. So if you tried all of them you would be pretty roasted by the end of the evening. As per most home brew events I only saw a few people that were out of control drunk, plenty too drunk to drive, but only a couple unable to walk drunk.

One of the things I find most interesting about any homebrew event is the wide variety of people the hobby attracts. There are Technicians who can recite to you the specifics of every batch they have ever made. Some guys are Artists that make great beer by feel, they don't write anything down and some of them make etherial beer, but they never make the same beer twice. There is the guy that only makes one recipe, but he does it very well. The New Guy who compares himself to people that have been doing this for 20 years and needs reassurance. Then there is New Book Guy, this is someone that just recently read a new brewing book and got fired up for something and he is going to make it and share with everyone. Normally these guys are most easily identified after reading Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers because they show up with a corny full of "Wild Rosemary and Bog Myrtle" Pale Ale. To distinguish them from Hippie Brewer you need to see what else they have on tap. Hippie Brewer was a rare commodity back in the Midwest, but I expect to see more of them here.

Another thing we did as part of Beerstock was to hold a Beer Judging Clinic. Since I am a BJCP Recognized Judge I took part. This was not a competition (but they did hand out a prize), but rather a chance for brewers to bring in a beer and have two judges taste, evaluate and discuss it with them. We were supposed to take shifts, but I ended up doing the full three hour run. I encountered everyone of the brewers listed above at my table. One guy showed up with his second and third batch and took notes while I talked. Another guy barely remembered his mash temp. I did not taste any that were truly hideous, a few bad ones, and one or two where I could not offer much advice because they were so good already.

Since I did not have beer to serve I brought a few bottles of my mead to share around. One guy in BREW is apparently the Mead King of Washington so I made sure to give him a sample of everything. He had some constructive critizim for all of them, but I am not sure if some of that was because I am new competition or not. He is an old school mead maker that thinks you should leave it in the carboy for 5 years before it is ready to drink. I think I made enough of an impression that people will know who I am when I show up.

During all of this when I visited clubs I was looking for a new home. I really like BREW, but Everett is not exactly next door. There is a club nearby that I have been trying to find a meeting to attend. They don't seem very well organized, online anyway. They did show for Beerstock so I went over to have a look. First thing is I did not see anyone that was older than college age, which is not a defect. However I did not see much more in the way of organization at the booth, which is a defect. I am looking for a club that is organized and has a plan. I am afraid that if I get involved with this bunch I won't have fun because I will either be bitting my tounge, or running roughshod over them to get things moving. Another nearby club did not show at all so I could not talk to them. The most interesting part of this came from a club that I never even thought about.

To give a bit of history. When a friend of mine moved back here from the Midwest he went to a club meeting near his place and was told, basically, that he had to attend three meetings before they would vote on letting him into the club. We are talking about a guy that had 9 beers go through the first round of NHC in this region and took a silver in the second round. When he lived in the Midwest he was High Plains Brewer of the Year for three years running, some of those years he was second of third on the club listings by himself. This is not the way you should treat people in the homebrew community. Last February he was back in the Midwest for my club's competition and he told me this story. So now I come to the great Northwest and am looking for a club. I got in touch with my friend and found out which club had given him the brush-off and marked them off of my list of potentials. So now we get to Beerstock and I am talking to clubs and making it clear that I am set on BREW, but could be wooed away. Representatives of the blacklisted club actually gave me the hard sell for joining them. Not once, not twice, but seven times they talked to me. It is nice to wanted, but I am not going to drive a long way for three months and hope that I get approved in some election.

All in all Beerstock was a lot of fun, but I think next year it will have to be somewhere else because 150 odd people on three acres of land is a bit much in terms of parking and logistics.