AHA conference
&
Oregon Brewer Fest
July 22-26, 1998

The AHA conference is going to be held this year in Portland just prior to the Oregon Brewers Festival. This is a great opportunity to check out the festival and conference in one trip but you have to get your reservations soon. If you wait, your not going to get hte best deal or room. I know because I've been going up for a while now.

If you want to know more, you can check out the review of the 1997 Oregon Brewers Fest I wrote up last year. I also have pictures of both 97' and 96' festival and breweries in the area.

Here is a little exerpt from the AHA about the upcoming Portland AHA conference. Remember that its still in the planning stages.

Look up Hotels

....here is some preliminary information:

1998 Homebrewers Conference

Homebrewers of all levels will learn to improve their brew – and tip a few, too -- as The Northwest Homebrew Express: Better Brewing in the Heart of Hop Country, steams into Portland, Ore., July 22-24. This is the 17th year for the AHA’s National Homebrewers Conference and several of homebrewing’s best known experts will be on hand to share their knowledge.

Educational brewing seminars will cover all experience levels – from novice newbie to super-geek techno-nerd – and all facets of brewing, from grain to glass. Among the highlights:

AJ DeLange will discuss how to doctor your brewing water to produce the world’s classic beer styles.

Ken Schwartz – known to internet beer scribes as Kennyeddy – will show how to take all-grain recipes and convert them to extract and partial mash.

Maribeth Raines-Casselman will teach the best way to culture yeast from your favorite commercial beers.

Fred Eckhardt will explore the advances in ingredients and processesfor producing homebrewed sake.

Dave Wills will dissect the differences between imported hops andtheir domestically grown counterparts.

Russ Wigglesworth will unlock the secrets to running a successful homebrew competition.

And there are many more talks and panels planned on topics ranging from no-sparge mashing to dispense options for homebrewers.

The conference also serves as the site for the second and final rounds of the National Homebrew Competition, where the best of an expected 4,000-plus entries will be judged to determine the winners in 28 categories of beer, mead and cider. Winners of each category will be announced at a special awards ceremony highlighted by the announcement of the Homebrewer of the Year, Meadmaker of the Year, Cidermaker of theYear and Homebrew Club of the YearOther highlights for clubs include two nights of club-hostedhospitality suites where clubs can get acquainted and compare notes andbeers and an expanded Homebrew Expo featuring club-brewed single-hopvarietal beers and a club Homebrew Ale-Lympics testing members in avariety of brewing skills.

In addition, there will be a roast of Fred Eckhardt, the dean of American beer writers; pub crawl tours, including visits to a hop field and sake brewery; and the annual Invitational Brew-off, featuring several of last year’s National Homebrew Competition winners brewing beers from the same recipe, but adding their own personal twist.As if that isn’t enough fun, beer and excitement, this year’sConference ends just as the popular Oregon Brewers Festival opens its11th year. This three-day festival is one of the largest outdoor beerfestivals in the country.

For more information on this year’s festival, call the AHA at 1-888-U-CAN-BREW, or visit our website at http://beertown.org. For information on club activities, contact Brian Rezac at (303) 447-0816ext. 121 or brian@aob.org via e-mail.Please realize that some of this information is subject to change; we'll get the final version up on the net this coming week.Amahl Turczyn

AHA