I think my voice was an octave lower for a couple of days. It was great meeting so many folks from the forum there. Took it easy yesterday afternoon after getting home. My wife and daughter had picked up a bunch of goodies from the Italian market on Saturday, so I snacked on that stuff all afternoon. I seem to be pretty well recovered today. I hope I can make it next year!
Exactly! Insanely loud white noise.
Such an amazing event. Being my first NHC it is definitely in my top 2 of beer events attended.
I didn’t get a chance to meet everyone either, but those I did get a chance too it was a pleasure. Hopefully I’ll meet the rest of you next year.
If anyone still has any of the RGB Pilsner from the conference lying around you might want to get it out of the house:
I drank mine at the conference but a couple of club members had theirs explode on the way home. The cans are way overcarbed.
Had mine pop wide open on the way home. Was able to smell pilsner all the way!
We drank one right before the grand banquet. It was WAY overcarbed, and extremely yeasty. The other can was left at the after-party.
Was that your goze? I judged the specialty category and really liked it. I talked to one of the best of show judges, Phil Farrell, to see how far it went in bos, but evidently Gordon Strong, who is doing research on the style, had “some problems” with it. I wish I knew what kind of problems. Maybe you could email him and ask.
Good idea on rubber-banding the guide lines to the bottles.
[quote]If anyone still has any of the RGB Pilsner from the conference lying around you might want to get it out of the house:
[/quote]
I heard rumors of exploding cans Friday AM at the registration table. Put mine in the car. When I checked in on it just before the banquet it looked like the one pictured. Very gently removed it, but apparently the walk toward the trash bin in the parking garage was too much - damn thing exploded in my hand. Luckily just the top went, and luckily it sprayed (mostly) away from me. Sounded like a bomb, but aside from a slight bruise I was unscathed. Hope no one got hurt from one of those! I suspect they rushed to can these for the event before they had fermented out. Shouldn’t you be filtering out the yeast if you are canning?
I have to say that this was one of the best conference cities of all the ones I’ve been to, because of so much to do within walking distance of the hotel. So many conferences have the hotel somewhere out near the airport and it takes a lot of effort to find the good beer places.
On the other hand I did not enjoy Pro Night or Club Night as much as in other NHC’s, because of the crowds and the noise. I guess they have some union laws that prevented the elaborate booths we’ve seen in the past.
I had to go to work today, and it sure is busy after having been off since Tuesday.
We were in a city? Who knew! ;D I only left the Marriott/Convention Center/Reading Terminal once.
I was guessing it was east coast clubs who’ve never been to club night and haven’t had years to build up an impressive booth - and west coast clubs not wanting to ship their booth out.
Maybe. - The noise was tough. I left pro-night early because of it.
I would have bought it was an American Wheat Beer - but not Pils. Some action still happening in the cans, obviously.
Clubs were told no food or power tools in the convention center.
That pilsner smelled like it had a Brett infection in the cans I dumped yesterday.
Jeff Carlson posted a picture of his 2 ruptured cans on face book, and said he thought it was something banging the underside of the car. Another guy in the club said his smelly clothes became extra smelly. 
You think that’ll be the case in Grand Rapids? We will start designing a club booth soon, so if we have to design around that, it’d be good to know now.
[quote]Clubs were told no food or power tools in the convention center
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If we had enough notice, we should have made a competition out of this…best macIver’ed club booth built by hand…imagine a popsicle stick and craft beer can tab/cap booth creation!
Just wait till some club grows their booth out hop plant topiaries…hmmm I should start a club.
Talkin’ 'bout sustainability!
Don’t know. Will have to look into it.
One of the drawbacks of growth is that the conference will be in more and more convention centers, and some of those are Union. Read farther down. Contact and ask if you want a yes/no answer.
http://devosplace.org/meeting-planner-guide
Philly was AWESOME, what a place to host the conference. Great walkable bars, great food at the Reading Market, HUGE facilities, great local organizers. WOW. What a conference!
I wouldn’t mind if Philly did it every time for the NE US region, that was incredible.
Although I loved our booth, we definitely fall into this category. Anyone come by the lighthouse?
Yeah, our booth was nothing impressive from an aesthetic perspective. We did manage to have 11 beers on tap though and saved on labor by making it self serve ;D
Wow, west coast elitism. Nice.