| |
|
|
By Jim Hilbing
Introduction
My wife and I had the opportunity to attend the Northwest Homebrew Express
(aka the 1998 National Homebrewers Conference) in Portland, July 22nd to 24th of this year.
This report describes our trip, the conference, and the beers we found, and hopefully
will pass along to you some of the information we learned during those eight days.
Instead of flying, we decided to drive to Portland for two reasons: we wanted to see the coast of California
and stop a few places along the way (for beer, too, of course), and we were bringing a keg of ESB with us for the
Invitational Brew-Off at the conference. Driving with the keg chilled in a cooler seemed a much better way to treat
the beer than shipping the keg UPS. We took three days to drive to Portland, stopping for two nights along the
way and arriving the night before the conference sessions started on Wednesday. The conference ended on Friday,
just in time for the Oregon Brewer's Festival which lasted through Sunday. Originally, we were planning on stopping
somewhere in central California on Monday on the way home, however, since Sierra Nevada is closed on Mondays (that's
a disappointment), we really didn't have the desire to spend two days driving home, and so we drove straight through.
I've divided up this report into three parts. This first part covers the conference sessions and events. The
second part will detail the hop field tour which was also part of the conference, and the last part will report
on the "State of Beer", describing some of the brewpubs, microbreweries and beers we visited and sampled
during the trip.
Part 1: Homebrew Express
Part 2: Willamette Valley Hop Field Tour
Part 3: State of the Beer
|
