Beer Bloggers Conference 2011 - It Drank Pretty Good

Well, I've been home for a week now since my record-breaking-quick, cross country venture to Portland, Oregon for the Beer Bloggers Conference and I'm sorry to say I haven't written down my thoughts from the conference yet. Between catching up on emails, other office duties and, of course, dealing with the insane end-of-summer weather of both an earthquake and hurricane rocking the east coast, the D4TH blog just fell lower on the to-do list.

BUT! Here we are now :)

Portland is such a wonderful city and I wish I had had a longer excursion to visit Beervana. Within an hour of my arriving (finally!) at the conference host hotel, the group was off on a trip outside the city to the Goschie Hop Farm to tour the facilities as they are amidst the bustling harvest season. What a picturesque site to walk, see, smell and hear all the action as the farmers busily prepare for the harvest!

Friday night concluded with the ever-popular "Night of Many Beers", an event that finds attendees bringing some of their brews from around the country to share with other bloggers that may not have these brews distributed in their region. Disclosure: as Heineken USA paid for my travel and attendance at the Beer Bloggers Conference, I brought some samples of Newcastle's exciting, new, yet-to-be-released seasonal offerings: Newcastle Werewolf and Newcastle Winter IPA.

Saturday was jam-packed with seminars on a variety of industry-related topics, ranging from dissecting beer laws to working with and learning from industry beer bloggers. Following the seminars, we hunkered down for Live Beer Blogging, otherwise referred to as speed-dating for beer bloggers. The event consisted of eight breweries pouring samples in a speed-dating format, talking with groups of bloggers in five-minute intervals to explain the brewery and how a favorite brew is prepared. Valuable takeaway: no matter how cautious you think you are, beer is magnetically attracted to electronics and will manage to find its way into every crevice of you computer (read what was to be my last tweet on my computer from the Live Beer Blogging event: "Last but not least #8 is @ryanaross and karl strauss pouring Boardwalk Black Rye 8i,n][j").

Before departing on Sunday, the conference's morning sessions were all about tools for bloggers, by bloggers. Dan of Life on Tap captured the eight blogger presentations in a blog post better than anything I could attempt to write up, so please give his article a read. Jay Wilson was our keynote speaker and delivered a really great presentation on what it takes to come up with a great idea and execute it in a blogosphere where there already exists so many authors and so much content it can sometimes be hard to determine who the influencers are.

Many influencers within the beer blogging community were most certainly at the Beer Bloggers Conference this year! I encourage you to try to attend next year's conference either in Europe or in America (or both!) if you have the opportunity. The experiences to network, socialize, share and learn from one another are unlike anything else one can pick up from participating in these spaces online alone. I'll look forward to seeing you there.

A final lunch - and Bloody Mary, to boot - were all else I needed before heading back to PDX Airport on the Tri-Met for the long trek back to Hartford. Here were a few of my favorite cell phone pictures captured during the conference, but there are many more if you look at the BBC11 group page on Flickr or visit individual blogger posts.

Cheers!

Before cracking open a bottle, here are the Newcastle Werewolf and Newcastle Winter IPA, as part of the Night of Many Bottles

A gigantic pile of hops at Goshie Hop Farm waiting to be compressed into bales.

...While swimming in said pile of hops.

International Beer Day 2011

It's here once again - today is International Beer Day! It doesn't take much twisting of my arm to convince me to open up a beer in celebration, especially one with such widespread camaraderie as this. However, it is really nice to be reminded just how connected our niche community of beer enthusiasts really is.

That is why I thought today would be a good opportunity to announce on the blog that I will be headed again to the 2011 Beer Bloggers Conference later this month in Portland, Oregon. I am looking forward to returning to the conference (though I should note a change in locale from last year's Boulder, CO outing) and again learning from some great minds in the industry, from brewmasters to brewery reps to beer bloggers, of course. Among the MANY activities that have sparked my interest, I am personally looking forward to Saturday morning's seminar "Learning From Industry Bloggers". Here's the panel description as it's listed on the conference website:

The focus of the Beer Bloggers Conference (and, indeed, the beer blogging community in general) is on what we call “citizen bloggers”, those not associated with a brewery or other business. However, at the same time there are hundreds of “industry bloggers” writing about or simply connected to a specific business. This panel will talk about how industry bloggers use their blogs to promote their specific business, gain customers, and enhance their own communities, all with an idea towards learning things we Citizen Bloggers might be able to apply. We will hear from Ryan Ross from Karl Strauss, Michael Busman from New Belgium, and Matt Van Wyk from Oakshire Brewing in Eugene, Oregon.

There will be lots of action to follow from the conference and if you want to follow at home, I would suggest starting by following the #BBC11 conversations taking place on Twitter (I'll be tweeting from both @Drinks4TheHouse and @stephaniejerzy).

For those looking to participate in International Beer Day in their communities tomorrow, check out the IBD web page to Find A Celebration in your area. As for me? Well, you'll likely find me at my local brewery, Thomas Hooker Beer, sampling the taps at their bi-monthly Open House. What a great kick start to the weekend!

Cheers!

Different Strokes for Different Folks

As the old saying goes, when in Rome do as the Romans do. And, with all my traveling over the last few weeks or so, I’ve got a (warning: long!) post that adopts many of the drinking habits in the three different US cities who welcomed me with gorgeous fall weather, and of course, delicious drinks. Here goes:

Portland, OR and Wine:

While Portland, Oregon has deservedly earned the reputation of being a beer or spirits city before wine, one of my greatest finds in the downtown area, just a dash up 12th Street from the plethora of alluring food carts, was a restaurant and wine bar fit for northern Europe. As described on its website, Gruner “draws on the affinity between the geographies of the Pacific Northwest and the alpine regions of northern Europe,” namely Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Romania. It just so happened that, many many time zones away, the EWBC was streaming live when I stumbled into Gruner for lunch on a busy Friday afternoon. Why not indulge in glass of vino!?

I happily elected the only Gruener Veltliner on the lunch menu available by the glass, a 2009 Stadt Krems of the Kremstal region. After consulting with wine guru Constance and her post on the Austrian Wine USA blog, I learned that this fresh and fruit-forward Gruener is part of a municipality of 52 vineyards in Austria. I’d recommend giving the Austrian Wine Blog a read to learn more about these particular Austrian vineyards.

While the food was hearty and flavorful, the service at Gruner during this particular visit was anything but memorable. What did help to end my visit on a pleasant note was the curious method of presenting my check in a worn paperback book. My particular novel was Weimar Culture by Peter Gay, a reflection of 20^th century culture in Germany; even more to my pleasure, the first page I flipped to was Gay’s written portrait (along with images, too) of the 1920 expressionist thriller The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Loved it!

Boulder, CO and Beer:

While I certainly had heard the tales before making my first visit to Boulder, Colorado for the 1^st Beer Bloggers Conference, I didn’t realize just how beer-centric this college mountain town is. Needless to say, I was both overwhelmed and impressed. In what was dubbed “The Night of Many Bottles”, I had the opportunity to try Denver-local Bush & Bull’s seasonal Royal Oil, a 12% ABV English-style barley wine called Royal Oil, which is aged for two years in whiskey barrels. Tasting like chocolate-covered cherries and oak from the whiskey barrels, this sweet, malty beer was among my favorite seasonal selection in the plethora of Colorado selections.

My other particularly favorite offering was, ironically, the last beer I sampled at BBC10 – the Agave Wheat from Breckenridge Brewery. While pale ales are by no means at the top of my beer-drinking list, this beer to me was completely refreshing and offered a light amount of hops that wasn’t too overbearing or bitter. Plus, the subtle flavoring of agave was right up my alley! Mix a glass 50-50 of Agave Wheat with orange juice and you have yourself a lip-smacking mimosa of sorts – from my picture, you can see it was the perfect "breakfast of champions" for the Sunday morning crowd! Now, about convincing Breckenridge Brewery to distribute to CT…

Beverly Hills, CA and Spirits:

What spirits do you say? Rum, rum, and more rum! That's what I found myself drinking after my adventures meandering through posh Beverly Hills along Wilshire Boulevard led me to the Trader Vic's Mai Tai Lounge poolside at the Beverly Hilton hotel. I pulled myself up to the bar and ordered - but what else? - the Victor "Trader Vic" Bergeron Original Mai Tai.

Trader Vic Mai Tai:

• 1 oz light rum
• 1 oz gold rum
• 1/2 oz orange curacao
  
• 1/2 oz orgeat syrup
  
• 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
• Float 1 oz dark rum
  

Build in a cocktail shaker and roll between the glass without straining. Garnish with speared cherry and pineapple chunk, and a mint sprig.

Boy, was that cocktail well worth the hype! I also found myself downing a Zombie shortly after my Mai Tai "mysteriously" disappeared; pictured to the right, it was a beautiful version of Donn the Beachcomber's classic of gold and dark rums and it vanished almost as quickly as that damned Mai Tai.

Phew! I have loved discovering all the different drinking trends around the country and hope to continue the adventure more soon! So what's coming up next in my imbibing adventures? Stay tuned to D4TH to find out!

Cheers for now!
SJ

Adventures Ahead in Portland, Oregon!

By the time you are reading this, I hope to be long on my way headed to Portland, Oregon. I have quite a few days of cocktail camaraderie ahead of me, hosted through the great efforts of the folks at the CSOWG (Drink.Write 2010) and the Oregon Bartenders Guild (Portland Cocktail Week 2010).

For me, the festivities start Wednesday night when Mandarine Napoleon welcomes CSOWG members and its guests (both local to Portland and visiting from around the country) with an evening of hors d'ouvres and, of course!, Mandarine Napoleon cocktails. I'll be sure to share the drink recipes and photos following the event. I've got Tommy Klus of BlueHour slinging drinks for us, so I know we'll be in good hands.

As for the rest of my trip to PDX? There's a great lineup of seminars on Thursday and Friday covering a great span of topics, ranging from offering strategies to make your own ingredients to covering blogging ethics and increasing reader engagement online.

For those of you not able to join the action in person, make yourself available on Thursday evening. The CSOWG will be hosting its weekly Thursday Drink Night LIVE in Portland. Never participate in TDN before? I've sung its praises before so log on, create a user name, and join in the cocktail party online.

I won't guarantee that my blogging will be on par with all the event coverage (I got behind during the US Drinks Conference as well, but more to come of that very soon!) so instead you should choose to follow the action on the two Twitter accounts.

More west coast action soon! Cheers!
SJ