And the beer beat goes on

You know you are at the National Homebrewers Conference when you get on an elevator at 5 o’clock in the morning (I had an early flight home) and there’s a guy who still hasn’t been to bed. He is holding a glass full of beer.

I came home from the conference in Minnesota with a notebook full of new, to me, information. It’s still a little wet right now because despite careful packing a bottle of (sour) beer and a bottle of mead did not survive the journey back. I could smell the problem the moment I grabbed my bag off the carousel. Some of what I learned will end up here, some in stories for various publications and some (eventually) in the hops book.

Meanwhile, one quick thought.

Saturday morning the “When Homebrewers Go Pro: Starting Your Own Brewery” panel was packed. Like much of the conference. Steve Parkes (American Brewers Guild) said he had not spoken before audiences this size in more than 10 years. He looked around Club Night (I wouldn’t even begin to try to describe it, but the room was full of more than 1,000 people and clubs brought more than 500 5-gallon kegs) and simply smiled.

So more than 300 people are crammed in to this room Saturday and I am thinking not all these people can really be thinking about starting their own brewery when moderator James Spencer asks just that question and for a show of hands. Scores go up. I think of something the late Greg Noonan told me a dozen years ago.

“When the homebrewers stop entering the profession, and the backyard breweries are squeezed out, then it will become stagnant,” he said. “You gotta keep getting the guys who say, ‘Cool, I can sell the beer I make. I can do it.’ ”

We’re not at the end of the line. Surly Brewing founder Omar Ansari emphasized that toward the end of the proceedings.

“The next wave of brewers is coming,” he said.

Then he posed a question. “What’s going to make those brewers different from one another?”