I’m firmly in the ‘not a club’ camp. I would be fine if they changed the name to local club of the year and eliminated all these larger national/international entities. Sure let people enter beers under them if they want but they really shouldn’t be allowed to compete for the club of the year. To me it just ruins the spirit of the award. I would say the BN winning it every year is the black mark.
QUAFF used to get boos, so did the St. Paul club at the end of their streak. Both had multiple Ninkasi winners in the club that helped the win. Some did not like that fact.
After the ceremony I was talking up front. Justin said QUAFF lost by 6 points. He said they should take it to the BN as next year it is on QUAFF’s home court. Then Kurt Stock told Justin he was joining QUAFF next year. Zing! Kurt has a great sense of humor, said that if you don’t know him.
I agree that BN won fair and square under the rules that take virtual clubs into account.
Oh for sure there was not cheating or anything like that. It was a fair win. I just don’t agree with the rules as they stand. I think it just takes some of the fun out of the award. I could see the other really big clubs also winning it over and over… but at least you kind of know what you’re up against vs some big virtual monster that can have all sorts of random amounts of people entering.
Maybe they need an Internet Club of The Year award…they could call it “The Al Gore” 
in 1997 my club (formerly known as Derby Brew Club) won COTY with less than 20 members. That was a different time, that is for sure…
This year we finished a very close second place for Gambrinus, which while not a perfect award, IMO does a better job of showing quality of a club’s brewers. After working for years to get club members to brew/enter NHC again, I’d have been way more proud of that than any individual awards. Oh well - maybe next year.
anyway…
arrived in Michigan on Monday. Had some mousy cider. Bought a bottle on reputation without trying it that now I find out is full of rodent too. Clean it up Greg…
Tuesday I went to Siciliano’s to beat the rush, spent a ton of time at Founders, and went to the Brewery Vivant beer dinner - nothing but great things to say about any of those places, as usual. Wish I could have taken the cider exam but dinner was calling.
Wednesday mead exam, bacon and beer brunch, and BJCP reception. Schramm’s Black Agnes and Gary Awdey’s cider presentation were highlights. Conference registration was a breeze.
Thursday judging. Sending the form ahead of time was a good idea. Sending it Wednesday when I couldn’t print it out (I’m like the last guy without a smart phone) was not. Poor communication on the necessity of the line, and other things already mentioned and not worth rehashing.
Judged Light Lagers. All solid to very good beers, with a few of the usual 1C/1D efforts masquerading as 1A/1B. I was pleased there were 4 teams judging the Finals categories this year; too many Final Round entries for 3 teams.
Martin, we’d love it if you would speed it up…
Judged Trad meads in the afternoon. Learning experience, but I did push the silver medal. Great take on Sage Blossom. Someone gave me a sample of the gold medal Perry; at that point I knew there was a spare bottle of my cider, so I retrieved it and gave it to Gary Awdey to rip apart at his leisure. Ya can’t miss an opportunity to get feedback from someone like that.
I agree that people were a bit ridiculous with the Opening Toast snacks piled high, but really, what did you think would happen? A few thousand hungry overweight guys in one room with a bunch of decent beer?
As others stated, vertical signage is a must. Too hard to find beers, and the layout made little sense. Crowded too, but at least there were tables to rest at. As bad as the sound was, I didn’t come out of there with a noise-induced headache like after Pro Night in Philly, at least…
Overall, I didn’t mind the change, but Pro Night was often my favorite event from a quality and I-haven’t-had-it-before standpoint, and this was not the same.
Too tired for ballpark; went out to dinner w/o beer as I did most nights. I was pleased with the restaurants in the area in terms of selection, quality, and price.
Really enjoyed the cider seminars on Friday. I know San Diego isn’t the cider center that Michigan is, but I still hope we get a decent number of these next year too. The cider tap takeover was great although I know several people who missed it as they were told it started at 3. Not sure who was giving out the misinformation.
Helped KCBM pour on Friday, though I only poured like 4 beers and mostly just hung out and served a few bottles of my stuff. I’d like to think I didn’t get in the way that much. Thanks for the shirt AmandaK! Charlie stopped by the booth; Amanda does Crane know Prez Papazian has had his beet beer? Can’t believe I missed the opportunity to pour something of my own for him!
Let’s get the ice to the clubs sooner though, eh? Next time the conference center will know that we need a lot…
The Saturday morning sour beer, new hops, and understanding honey seminars were really really fantastic. Appreciated the mead tap takeover in the social club; I want to see more of this kind of thing.
Missed the BJCP guidelines presentation to get more sour mead; looking forward to seeing the changes.
Wow, long line for the banquet. I’d like to thank High Gravity for letting a few of us Wichita people sit at their sponsor table again or we’d have been in the back row.
tschmidlin sat with us too and used profanity to describe the cider I poured for him…in a good way. 8)
was prepared to be underwhelmed by the food, but it was great. really great. Thanks to forum member braufessor who gave me the bottle of Raspberry Berliner weisse that I shared with the table. Great stuff!
Sound was bad, but I was close enough to read the names at least. And also, no matter how you feel about TBN winning COTY, I have to thank them for letting my family have a chance to see me walk across the stage.
as others have asked, where were the leftover competition bottles? rooting through them is one of my favorite things!
met some of the wedding party in the Amway on Sat. night. guys who were REALLY tired of champagne and wish they’d skipped out. I hope at least one of us drunks got into the background of the wedding photos, hehehe…
Overall I met a ton of you guys. Only a couple I regret. 
I’ll save specifics about the competition for another thread later this summer.
see you in cloudy San Diego!
–Michael
As much as I would love a local NHC here in Dallas I couldn’t see it going off very well. June in Dallas can be in the upper 90s. This year it has been surprisingly cool but the last several years were hot and disgustingly humid. Our traffic is awful, public transportation is minimal and everything is spread out. We don’t have that many local breweries yet so your options to explore beyond the conference are minimal. If you are willing to tolerate everything else I said then Austin would be your better option. Far more breweries but about the same weather and traffic.
+1 Austin is a better choice. Would be funny to see the bars on dirty 6th filled with all the old timers.
A few people liked the early morning running tours of GR. I am not a runner, I just heard about it.
Did anyone take the bus tours to breweries? I didn’t have time for those. Interested if they were good.
Austin would be fun, but it only has the one commuter train, and I have never used the bus system there. I stay away from 6th street, as I am way too old for those shenanigans.
I was talking with one guy at the airport and he said he bus tour driver didn’t seem to know where he was going. There was one point they came to an overpass but the bus couldn’t go under, so he had them walk a half mile to the brew pub (supposed to go to the production brewery) while he found a way around.
I attended the Brewery Vivant dinner, which was pretty good from a food stand point and excellent from the beer side (many Red Coq jokes all night long).
I also attended the Bacon and Beer brunch, which I felt was a little underwhelming. It was nice to have a small group chat with the like of John Palmer and Ken Schramm, but I would have liked to see more bacon. Even one of the guys from AIH thought the bacon was lacking and they setup the event.
The BN party was fun (I hope John Palmer didn’t break something on that tumble to first). I had the VIP, which was ok for the money and included a shirt (which I always buy anyways)…although I got to try a couple beers I’ve never had before that weren’t on the field. One beer I had to dump (Train Wreck…undrinkable. Hopefully it didn’t kill any grass).
We got to “Pro-Night” about a 1/2 hour late, so we missed the opening speech (which a friend of ours said it was like listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher) and all the food was gone except some chips (no cheese).
Club night was awesome as always, with my best favorite beers being F$%* your Face, and a Flanders Red at the Daniel Fick’s booth. Hung out with the Red Ledge Brewers for a while since the VP is someone we communicate with on Twitter and the BN constantly…even got a t-shirt and a growler.
The banquet was great, but yes the sound sucked. Worst thing I saw…when they started letting people in, someone dropped their tote bag full of beer and smashed them…I felt bad. At least the concrete floor makes for an easy cleanup.
I like the ticket line so there weren’t 1500 people all being let in a once and causing a stampede, like in Philly. That was a big, hot, sweaty mess.
Damn! We’re runners and did not hear about the running tours. I wanted to go on the pedal pub crawl, but didn’t have time.
Has there been any chatter about doing Club of the Year like GABF does Brewery of the Year?
Having ‘Small Club of the Year’, Mid size Club’, ‘Large Club’ and what have you would surely calm a good number of boos. Plus, it would give tiny clubs with really good brewers something to shoot for.
Love that idea.
I second this as a great idea.
This was my first NHC. I was blown away and will definitely attend again.
So many great seminar topics and I’m looking forward to the audio for the ones I could not attend.
I volunteered as a steward. Really did have a blast doing that. There was some confusion for me as I’m standing in line clueless for the check-in table. The guy walks down the line collecting our papers. I stepped out of line along with all the others around me assuming they only wanted the paper, not knowing (until right before judging started) that I really needed to visit that table to get my category assignment. Oh well, it worked out.
One regret I have now is not coming in a day or two early to visit the GR-area brewing scene. Not much time to do so once the conf got rolling. I did get to visit Hopcat and Founders, both incredible places.
Dislike = The $40 cab ride from the airport to JW Marriott.
The dinner was fantastic. Good choice of beers with dinner.
I’d say ‘National Club’ (pulling members nationwide), ‘Small Club’ (fewer than X members), and ‘Regional Club’ (large clubs that are not national).
I took the 131 tour on Tuesday and the Premier tour on Wednesday. They were enjoyable. I was worried since food and beer weren’t included (we did get some free tastings), but it wasn’t too expensive since we only stayed at each place long enough for a few beers. Good times.
I had made arrangements to share a cab with bosoxbrent and when we were taking a picture of the Welcome banner at the airport, a couple other guys asked if we wanted to share a cab, so it was $10 each. Nice that MI doesn’t allow them to up the fare for addition passengers.
Perhaps some AHA GC contacting is in order… however the names split up would be fine, but continuing to have what is essentially “The Biggest Club of the Year” award and the “Best Winning %” Award while changing the entry limits and such will likely have some interesting outcomes.
I’m wondering how many clubs are banding together and forming ‘super-mega-clubs’ for next year.
I thought KCBM gave Radegast a good run this year… turns out we were $74,000 short on charity fundraising! :o
That’s insane the amount of money they raised. A guy at my table said the AHA should charge $1 extra per person and funnel all that money into the Radegast charity contribution. So instead of $500, they could donate $3-$4k. I know the conference fee is steep already, but $1 for charity is nothing.
The guys from Grand Rapids Brewery Tours were driving people around the city in their van for tips. They gave us a ride to Brewery Vivant and picked us up a few hours later. They were very cool! Our friends found them - I think they were just hanging out by one of the hotels looking for people who wanted to go somewhere. Said they were just looking for publicity.
I’d post a link if I could find one.