Evaluate Your Beer Like a Master Judge
Learn practical methods for assessing the aroma and flavor of your homebrew, exercises for developing your palate, and the techniques beer judges use to assess beer in amateur and professional competitions. Lean the structured tasting process, how to read and apply style guidelines, and how to evaluate beer for technical…
Exploring Fruit Ciders
This seminar offers an overview of the procedures and processes of adding additional fruit to hard cider. Topics include base cider selection, fruit pairing and preparation, yeast selection, nutrients, aeration, and more. From acidity and tannins to stabilizing and back sweetening, you’ll gain a comprehensive overview of what it takes…
Fermenting All of It! Filling the Table with Home Fermented Goodness
Learn the similarities and differences among fermented products like vinegar, kombucha, sauerkraut, and other fermented vegetables.
From Harebrained Idea to Mead Medal Winner
There are multitudes of great recipe ideas out there if only you know where to look. A night out for dinner or a trip down the grocery store aisle could be the inspiration for your next award-winning mead. Learn where to find these ideas and how to bring them to…
Going Pro: Why You Should (or Shouldn’t) Turn Your Hobby into a Business
For most of us, becoming a professional surfer, baseball player, or drummer just isn’t in the cards. But becoming a professional brewer? It can happen. This presentation will empower hobby brewers who are considering going pro with the information they need. It will attack the idea from an administrative angle,…
Hardcore Mild
Mild ale is a style with a long, sometimes confusing history. It’s rare to find commercially brewed milds in the US, so homebrewers who want a pint of mild often need to brew it themselves. Luckily, it’s a relatively quick and inexpensive style to brew at home. Mild ale can…
Hold My Beer and Watch Me Science!
Join Denny Conn and Drew Beechum from Experimental Brewing, along with Marshall Schott and Malcolm Frazer from Brülosophy, for this panel discussion. Learn how citizen science can improve your brewing and help you discover what works and what doesn’t. Questions will be taken and are encouraged!
Homebrew Disrupts American Beer: A Live Interview with Charlie Papazian
Join Charlie Papazian as he reveals the events and ideas in his life that helped immerse millions of homebrewers in the disruptive revolution of homebrewing. Homebrewing changed how the world views beer and will continue to be the leading edge of beer's evolution. Tom Dalldorf and Chip Walton will join…
Homebrew Worldwide: An International Panel
Join moderator Chip Walton of Chop & Brew and a panel of international homebrewers to discuss our hobby and the global homebrewing culture from many different perspectives. Learn how homebrewers from other countries overcome challenges related to supplies and equipment, work with indigenous and popular styles, and brew beer on…
Ice Cider
Ice cider is a delicious but uncommon cider style. This seminar reviews the history and origins of ice cider and discusses tips and techniques for making it at home. Learn about apple juice selection, the freezing process, fermentation, and post-fermentation adjustments to make your own ice cider.
In It to Win It: Tips, Tricks, and Strategies for Competing Your Way to Better Beer
With great beer comes great awards! Learn how homebrew competitions can improve your beer and ultimately make you a better brewer. Find out how to maximize your chances at winning gold from two highly successful competition brewers who have a history of going against each other, tooth and nail, to…
Lager Yeast Strain Selection for Style, Flavor, and Aroma
There are many lager strains available on the market and a number of diverse lager styles. Selecting the correct right lager strain for your goals is the first step towards brewing your best lager ever. This seminar analyzes different lager styles and helps homebrewers learn the yeast selection criteria needed…
Lagers to Lambic: Hard Stuff the Easy Way
Lager, lambic, high-gravity, low-gravity, fruity, and funky—it’s enough to make your head spin! Many brewers might believe that certain styles are out of reach, requiring techniques accessible only to the brewing elite. But these “challenge” styles are within your grasp and easier than you think! Join bloggers Brian Hall of…
Liquid Time Capsules
In this two-part seminar, Patrick McGovern and Ken Schramm take us on a fascinating, fermented journey through time. Dr. McGovern brings the past alive with spicy, fruity, and malty aromas and flavors unearthed in his new book, Ancient Brews: Rediscovered and Re-created. Then Ken explains why we are living in…
Maintaining Quality after the Brew Day
This presentation focuses on quality from keg to glass. With all the time and effort we spend making our beer, let’s make sure we serve it with equal care! Kegerators, keezers, jockey boxes, and party taps are common equipment, and its important to know how to properly clean and maintain…
Mastering Mead
Minnesota is home to seven of the last 12 AHA Meadmakers of the Year: Curt Stock (2005), Steve Fletty (2007 and 2016), Steve Piatz (2008), Thomas Eibner (2009 and 2012), and Matthew Weide (2014). Join a panel discussion with these award-winning meadmakers and learn about their signature meads. Meads from…
My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the Yard: Brewing New England IPAs
New England Style IPA (NEIPA) showcases some of the best hop flavors and aromas to be found in beer, and it’s growing in popularity. Ed and Brian will shed light on this hazy, sometimes-controversial style and discuss the recipe formation and brewing techniques you need to create the crushable hop…
Oaking Levels in Traditional Mead
This seminar demonstrates how aging Traditional Mead on oak can drastically change its flavor and perceived sweetness. Four Traditional Meads will be served: one that hasn’t been oaked at all, along with three that have been aged on the same kind of oak for different lengths of time.
Origins and Evolution of Australian Sparkling Ale
Australian sparkling ale is in the 2015 BJCP Guidelines as Category 12.B., and now is a great time to explore this style in depth. This seminar includes details of brewing techniques across different eras and how these techniques might have influenced the flavors and development of Australian sparkling ale. Recreations…
Pairing Beer: How Does Your Palate Approach, Taste, and Pair Beer?
Taking a sip of beer might seem as common as a blue sky, but what is the first thing you think about when you taste it? In this seminar, we will dive into the two main palate approaches to tasting beer, discover how each defines a pairing, and learn how…
pH in the Home Brewery
We’ll follow pH in the brewhouse from water to beer. Topics will include the definition of pH, brewing software and pH control, and the importance of pH in brewing water, mash, kettle, and the finished beer.
Recipe Development with Dangerous Man
Join the staff of Dangerous Man Brewing as they delve into the myriad ways to build a recipe. Whether it’s a nod to tradition, a twist on an old favorite, or a completely unique approach to an ale or lager, Rob, John, and Alxndr will offer their insights. Challenge your…
Saluting the Ancient Purveyors and Preservers of Beer! Brewing on the Borders of Greek and Roman Dominion
Ancient sources discuss beer as an invention of the barbarians of Northern Europe and the savages of the Near East. This presentation explores those peoples of Northern Europe known to have produced and preserved beer culture under Roman and Greek oppression. Travis Rupp will explore ancient brewing conventions of British,…
The Big Mo: Molasses Beer, America’s Forgotten Beer Style
Early Americans often made their beer without malt—they used molasses instead! Why would they do this, and what kinds of beer did they make? Join beer historian and master of historic foodways Frank Clark as he explores America’s forgotten beer style, molasses beer! This beer was one of the most…
The Critical and Often Overlooked Spec: Final Gravity
This seminar highlights the importance of final gravity (FG) to various beer styles and discusses how to achieve target FGs. Commercial brewers and homebrewers often don’t pay enough attention to FG, but doing so and adjusting accordingly can greatly improve the quality of your beer. We will discuss mass-produced light…
The Dinosaur in My Beer: 250 Million Years of Homebrewing History
You probably know the historical origins of brewing in early human civilization, but our favorite ingredients also plant their roots back in the Age of Dinosaurs. Paleontologist Andy Farke will time travel with seminar participants, munching hops with Triceratops, tracing the connections between malting and bird evolution, and more! You…
Use of Dry Yeast for Fermentation and Bottle Conditioning
The advantages of dry yeast are often misunderstood and discounted by homebrewers, but experience in a commercial brewery demonstrates the consistency of performance, especially for bottle conditioning. With the introduction of new varieties, dry yeast is a great tool for homebrewers! Join Jennifer Helber as she discusses the best practices…
Using Trees in Unsual Ways to Create Unique Flavor Profiles
Using maple, hickory, juniper, and oak trees as guides, we describe how to create unique flavors from leaves, bark, sap, nuts, buds, berries, and branches. We’ll discuss historical uses of each tree and the different ways they add complexity to beer. We’ll also describe how to harvest different tree parts,…
A Timeline for Sour Beer: How to get the Flavors you Want, When you Want Them
This seminar's focus will be on attaining a wanted flavor profile without the all the fuss, specifically in Lambic and Berliner Weisse styles. Does age always matter? How does an imagined profile become reality when brewing wild beers? This presentation will look at traditional versus modern production—how to produce what…
Ancient Beer Brewing in the World of Wine: Bronze Age Greece through Alexander the Great
Building off last year’s AHA conference in San Diego, in which Travis discussed beer production in ancient Egypt and the stigma against beer in ancient Rome, this seminar will discuss the hidden anomaly of brewing and the beer industry in ancient Greece. Covering the Bronze Age through the Age of…
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