If you’d like to hear me talk about brewing and/or get a book or four signed in the coming months here are a few opportunities:

– Two incentives to sign up for an American Homebrewers Association (AHA) membership by midnight Sunday. 1) You may buy Great American Beer Festival tickets during the member pre-sale on Aug. 2, with one option a ticket to the members only session on Oct. 8. 2) You will receive a copy of “For the Love of Hops” (which you may bring to the members only session, where I will sign it). This is the way I understand that it works. When you sign up through a link provided to homebrew clubs (this is the St. Louis Brews link) you use the code ILOVEHOPS at checkout to get the book. You must be an AHA (or Brewers Association) member at midnight Sunday to buy GABF tickets on Aug. 2, and the deal on my book runs through July.

– Asheville Homebrewers Conference, Aug. 13. I’m looking forward to hearing Mike Karnowski of Zebulon Artisan Ales talk about “murk,” Todd Boera of Fonta Flora Brewery (who contributed a recipe to “Brewing Local”), and Michael Tonsmeire, “The Mad Fermentationist.”

– Australian National Homebrewing Conference, Oct. 13-15. I’m headed to Australia directly from Denver (GABF). Plenty of talks have my attention, but I’m already beguiled because they call the pauses between presentations “hot breaks.”

– Midwest Regional Homebrewers Conference, Cape Girardeau, Mo., Nov. 5. This event is still coming together.

Or 25.07.16 if you prefer.

Either way, Happy Birthday Daria.

There will be no beery links here Monday. A busy Saturday will be followed by two days of birthday (not mine) travel. On Saturday I’ll be taking a stroll along Manchester Avenue with Lew Bryson and Joe Stange. Some walking, more drinking of beer, probably even more talking. I expect that, among other things, we’ll be discussing topics that came up in two posts that would be in the Monday links were there to be Monday links.

1) Imports in the Age of Local. Set aside a little time, because Bryan Roth has more than 3,000 words to say about this at Good Beer Hunting. Both Joe and Lew have written, or co-written, several guidebooks. These are reminders that people travel to drink local. Makes sense to me. For centuries beer has also traveled to meet drinkers. But the business of selling it might have changed.

2) The Dreary Reality Of Those Disclosures. It will easier to follow what Alan McLeod has to say if you subscribe to Boak & Bailey’s newsletter (scroll down and look on the to sign up). This is a topic I might think about too much, over think, and make too complicated. Alan and I discussed this after Boak & Bailey wrote about it in their May newsletter and I included some of the thoughts last week in the keynote speech at the Beer Bloggers Conference in Tampa. The bloggers heard the fourth rewrite of the keynote, and it needed at least four more.

But I’m OK with Julia Herz’s takeaway: “Journalists need to be held to a higher standard.” (And that means holding ourselves to a higher standard.) Self righteous? Probably. Certainly more explanation is needed, and maybe Joe and Lew will help push me past the tipping point that will result in the addition to the mission statement here.