This year brings a lot of change to the Fair. We're moving on from the Phinney Ridge venue. The venue and people were great, but issues with cost, timing, consumption, and demonstrations limited us there. This year we will be having the Fair at Larry's Brewing Supply. Not only has Larry been one of our biggest sponsors in the past, but now we can have actual brewing demos and hopefully bring new people into the hobby, long a goal of the Fair.
We've also formed an alliance with the Washington Homebrew Association (WAHA). WAHA's goals are so closely aligned to the Fair's that it is a natural fit. In fact after this year, they will take over the Fair. We hope this means more events, more support, and continued growth. Imagine someday an event like the Fathers' Day Brewfest, except all homebrew!
The Beer Essentials continues to sponsor and support our efforts, but we have a new sponsor Diamond Knot Brewery who will be supporting our prizes. This brewery started out homebrewing like the rest of us, and it's a good fit. This year you could get your beer brewed by Diamond Knot! They will choose a beer from the BOS round that fits their line up and brew it.
As always the Greater Everett Brewers' League (GEBL) is there with their deep brewing, evaluating, educational, and competition expertise.
It's going to be a great year, get brewing!
Photos from Homebrew Fair 2007 are now available!
The Homebrew Fair is a unique educational beer event, pairing homebrewers directly with BJCP (Beer Judges Certification Program) judges, professional brewers, award-winning brewers, homebrew shop employees, and beer literati to evaluate their beers .
Homebrew competitions are generally based on styles, these are well-defined objective criteria the judges use to evaluate entries. However, these can be very evasive for homebrewers. The average homebrewer, not having a great understanding of styles, is apt to enter into whatever category seems correct, without understanding all of the subtleties involved. Judges find it very distressing to have to write comments such as "This Pale Ale would've scored much higher had it been entered as a Special Bitter," and can only imagine how opaque such comments are to the typical homebrewer.
Instead, how about a "Homebrew Fair" where the individual brewers can bring in a host of beverages and sit down with an expert who can evaluate and help troubleshoot the beer/mead? This has tremendous advantages because the judge would have access to the recipe and techniques used, which we do not typically have at competition, so we can prescribe very precise remedies.
There is an additional benefit to this: the evaluators get feedback on their feedback, something that the whole judging program is sorely lacking and has no mechanism to provide. So we train both the brewers and the judges.
In addition to having one-on-one tasting and troubleshooting, the fair provides basic information on brewing. All of the local homebrew clubs will have tables to inform and recruit new members, as will the local shops. While the brewers are waiting to get their score sheets, local brewers and other style experts will be giving lectures on style and technique.
Even if you don't brew (yet) the fair will be entertaining. Learning about brewing will help you appreciate beer the way learning about art history helps to appreciate art. And if you're on the fence about brewing, come and meet your local brewing community: every major brewing club and homebrew store in the area will have representatives at the fair.