I promise you, I am properly embarrassed.
I will be among the “homebrew rockstars” pouring beer Oct. 11 at the Great American Beer Festival. Pouring a tripel that American Homebrewers Association director Julia Herz and I brewed in the festival hall will be fun. The part that makes me blush is being called a rock star.
Perhaps I should explain. Homebrew Headquarters for AHA Members takes the place, so to speak, of the annual homebrewers convention (also known at Homebrew Con). John Holl talked to Herz about the hiatus for an All About Beer podcast. It is fair to admit the decision was not universally positive. There are many things about a three-day conference that homebrewers truly enjoy.
I understand, but for a homebrewer there will be worse places to be Oct. 9-12 than Denver. Here’s the full lineup of AHA events, starting with Club Night Oct. 9. And there is way too much new at the festival itself to try to describe here.
The photo at the top is from the day we brewed the tripel at her house. That’s a bag of Pevec from Troubadour Maltings in Fort Collins, Colo. So there is more to explain. When Julia asked me to participate in HQ at AHA I suggested we brew a tripel in collaboration. I wrote the recipe in 2005, not long after I visited Belgium’s six (at the time) monastery breweries, plus a few others, while doing the research for “Brew Like a Monk.”
When GABF held a Pro-Am competition for the first time in 2006, Ted Rice and I used that recipe at Chama River Brewing (RIP) in Albuquerque to brew one of 35 entries. Dogfish Head Brewery founder Sam Calagione had first suggested the competition, and homebrewers and GABF staff members together wrote the contest rules.
Basically it worked this way: Craft breweries selected award winning homebrew recipes from existing homebrew competitions or through their own competition. The professional brewers then scaled up the winning homebrew recipes to be brewed in their brewery and entered in the special competition judged by the same Professional Judge Panel as commercial entries.
The homebrewed version of the tripel earned a shot because it had advanced from the regionals to the second round of the National Homebrew Competition in 2005, and later won a gold medal in the New Mexico State Fair.
Its history made it a logical choice for our collaboration. Which brings us back to Troubadour. When Julia and I started discussing the recipe, I asked about the water profile at her house, and how it might be different than in Corrales, N.M., where I first brewed the beer. Then came the “aha moment.” Rather than making the beer with German malts and German and Czech hops, we decided to use Colorado ingredients.
Troubadour donated the Pevec and a bit of Seranede malts, Billy Goat Hop Farm Crystal hops and Colorado Hop Company U.S. Tettnang hops (which are really Fuggles, and we can talk about the conspiracy theory behind that if you are at GABF).
If you are a member of the American Homebrewers Association and will be attending GABF on Oct. 11 please stop by and say hello. We can talk about monastic brewing, about brewing wheat beers, about foraging for ingredients, about hops, about the first GABF Pro-Am. Or about how silly it is to label me a rock star.