National Homebrew Con 2022
Text by Aaron Pigors, with photos by Mike Beck, Art Kim, Bob Mann and Aaron Pigors
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On Thursday, June 22, 2022, four members of IBRU left for an epic road trip to Pittsburgh for Homebrew Con! Bob, Mike, Art and Aaron gathered in Highland around 7am to load up and depart.
Bob drove the happy homebrewers east until a stop for lunch – at legendary Cleveland-area brewery, Fat Heads! The guys each enjoyed a meal and a taster flight before grabbing some merch on the way out. Fat Heads had a huge draft beer selection covering a range of styles, including traditional and fruited beers. All were very good, and Fat Heads is definitely a recommended spot!
The road trippers arrived at the Omni William Penn hotel in downtown Pittsburgh around 5pm. Before long they were taking a quick 12-minute walk to the convention center. The check-in was quick and they soon entered the big event of the first day of the con: the Kickoff Party!
The Kickoff Party was a beer fest put on by many Pittsburgh-area breweries, welcoming homebrewers who travelled near and far to sample local craft beers. Aaron connected with some Pennsylvania friends at the con, and many homebrewing and beer judging legends were in attendance, including Gordon Strong, Sandy Cockerham, Brad Smith, and Steve McKenna.
The Kickoff ended promptly at 8, so the IBRU crew took the party back to the hotel where they had pizza and did a bottle share tasting with the Aaron’s Pennsylvania friends, Jon and Alex. The sampling continued long into the night (the latest Bob had been up in YEARS) and everyone finally wound down around 2am.
On Friday morning the A Team (Aaron & Art) were up at 8 while the B Team (Bob & Beck) slept in.
Grabbing breakfast along the way, A Team went to Homebrew Con early to catch a seminar on adding fruit to beers. Art volunteered and served two fruit beers for the session. The hour-long session was incredibly educational and provided detailed charts for fruit addition amounts that will be a handy resource worth keeping around to reference.
Aaron went to another session next, this time on smoking malts at home. It was a valuable session that included tasting four homebrewed rauchbiers as well as comparing up close some malts smoked on different types of wood.
Art meanwhile caught up with Bob and Mike as the Homebrew Expo opened for the day. The Expo was a large show floor with dozens of booths from vendors offering information, demonstrations, beer samples, and giveaways of all kinds. Everyone loaded up on free hops, dry yeast, stickers and more. Art, Bob, and Mike eventually returned to the hotel with their haul of homebrew swag as Aaron attended a session about the history of the BJCP beer styles.
The four IBRUers soon reconvened at the Homebrew Con cellar docks with the keg they’d brought with them from back home. One Trick Pony generously donated a keg of the recent collaboration brew with IBRU, Art’s Belgian Dark Strong recipe “All Tomorrow’s Parties.” With the keg in the care of the Con’s trusted Cellar Crew, it was time to relax a little and rest up before one of the trip’s biggest highlights: Club Night.
Club Night was kind of the “Main Event” of Homebrew Con. It was when homebrew clubs set up their booths and served their own beer – made by homebrewers, for homebrewers. The setups weren’t just tables and jockey boxes either. There was a chicken necklace parade. A photo booth camper. There were themed booths, costumes, fully constructed bars, lots of hot pepper beers, and so many more sights, smells, and sips – it was an experience like no other.
The IBRU bunch wore their club shirts and met up with many other homebrew clubs, sharing ideas as well as beers. IBRU did not have a booth at this Homebrew Con, so the guys were free to roam around, sample and connect with people. They chatted with Bonnie, a newly-elected president of a Winston-Salem NC-based club who was impressed by our shirts and logo. They hung out with some of the staff at MoreBeer (which was a major sponsor of club night and who were apparently long lost cousins of ours - at least based on their shirts), including one of the owners and a senior staff member in charge of MoreBeer’s written articles.
Club Night sadly came to an end officially at 9:30. The IBRUers grabbed some excellent local tacos en route back to the hotel, and then they enjoyed a “Bourbon County Diagonal” trying four different variants from four different years, 2017-2020. Aaron suggested a midnight lights-out curfew, and only missed it by an hour. At least no one turned into a pumpkin beer.
Saturday morning arrived and all four IBRU members attended a 9am session they couldn’t miss: Aaron was the speaker at a seminar called “Members Only: Organizing Club Homebrew Contests.” It was there that the All Tomorrow’s Parties keg was served, poured by Art, Bob, and Mike who volunteered for the session. The seminar sparked good discussion with many in attendance, and lots of great ideas for club events and activities were shared. The Belgian Dark Strong was a hit too, despite being a 10 abv beer served first thing in the morning.
From there, Bob visited a session on historical British mead, Aaron checked out a BJCP exam prep seminar, and Mike and Art returned to the Expo Showfloor. After the sessions Bob and Aaron rejoined the group and everyone loaded back up on freebies. The Expo’s big finale was a raffle hosted by Brad Smith. Art won a Fermzilla fermenter at the raffle!
Later in the day, the National Homebrew Competition awards ceremony was held. IBRU had a few beers in the contest, so everyone attended the ceremony. Mike won a medal at the National Homebrew Competition, the first known medal for any member of IBRU! He made the club proud by nabbing 3rd place in the Smoked Beers category for his lichtenheiner, a major accomplishment on the biggest stage in homebrewing!
Immediately following the Homebrew Awards, the Knockout Party was held. This was the last event of Homebrew Con, where all the remaining competition beers, meads, and ciders were opened and shared. At the Knockout Party IBRU sparked conversation with folks from Chicago club CHAOS, the owners of Chicago-based Gnome Brew (which won Homebrew Shop of the Year award), and even chatted with AHA President Julia Herz.
After the knockout party, everyone went to dinner at a local Italian restaurant then had a pretty quiet night – only four beers, including a Transient Neckbeard Nectar and a 2013 Dark Lord were opened.
Come Back Soon for photos from the breweries that were visited on the way back home!
Sunday was the final day of the voyage, and Homebrew Con had ended. However, that didn’t mean the road trip fun was done quite yet. The IBRU carpoolers took a different route home through central Ohio where they stopped at the surprisingly craft brewery-rich city of Dayton.
The first stop was Warped Wing brewery where they had excellent chicken wings and bison burgers, as well as some fine beer samples for lunch.
From Warped Wing the guys were able to easily walk to two more breweries within just a few blocks of each other. They popped into Dayton Brewing Company, which featured a hop garden and rooftop patio, as well as 30 craft beers on tap. The third destination was for a taste at Toxic Brewing, which sported a tattoo shop counterculture aesthetic.
The final stop was the major reason for the detour to Dayton: a visit to Carillon Brewing. Carillon is part of a large historical park and is a fully functional 1850’s era brewery. The staff all wore old fashioned clothes (and some sported epic frontier beards). Beers recreated from actual 1850’s recipes were sampled, including a dry stout served from a cask.
No proper IBRU brewery visit is complete without a brewhouse tour. The peak highlight of Sunday was meeting Carillon’s brewmaster, Kyle, who was generous with his time and enthusiastic to talk brewing with homebrewers. Kyle invited us to climb the wooden stairs up to the wood-fired brickwork brew area high above the taproom. We spent an hour in this 1800’s brewhouse learning all about the historical resources and challenges involved with brewing the old-old fashioned way.
The IBRU crew packed into Bob’s truck for the final leg of the trip home tired but inspired. Our passion for homebrewing was reinvigorated with so many good memories, connections, and ideas formed over the epic 4-day adventure.
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