Beervana 2010

Beervana 2010 at last has come to an end. Four sessions across two days - 12-4 & 5-9 both Saturday and Sunday. Over 40 brewers to chat with and discuss their techniques. Over 170 different NZ craft beers to taste. Some phenomenal, some very drinkable, some rubbish. There were also informative sessions throughout - a beer and food matching session with Neil Miller (beer writer and someone I'm lucky enough to know) and Martin Bosley (top NZ chef), a talk by Sam of Dogfish Brewery about how he got started, a beer and cheese matching, etc.

I volunteered the first session which was fun. While I knew some of the brewers already, I met a lot more. Got to help them get setup, get pouring and generally keep them going throughout. The rest of the time I was to be pouring for the Yeastie Boys and 8 Wired Brewing at the Beer NZ booth. Unfortunately, they ended up having way too many folks to help. Even Stu (brewer for the Yeastie Boys) couldn't make it behind the booth. Fortunately, that meant I spent most of the rest of the sessions tasting. Ran into lots of friends and made some new ones.

Friday night some new friends came back to mine for a few beverages. The last one left my place at 8:30 Saturday morning. Gotta love the Irish. Of course, I love them more when they aren't selfish lovers, but that's another story for another time.

As you can imagine, Saturday was a long day. I finally had to sneak away in the last session for a nana nap. I was too exhausted to continue. You know when you get that cold clammy sweat going? Yeah, time to give myself a break. Felt like a champ after my nap and headed back. We finished cleaning up a bit after 10pm. Everyone kept asking me to go out for a few drinks after. For once in my life I made the smart decision and decided to go home instead. So I stopped by the pub to say farewell to everyone and then went home. Grabbed some food, took a hot bath and then went to bed. Slept for about 11 hours which was beautiful.

Woke this morning and went to my favourite coffee shop. Managed to get all but four clues in the crossword which was pretty satisfying. Have spent the rest of the day on the couch watching dvds. Is 8pm too early to go to bed? :-)

Time to recover before next year's Beervana.

This moment of pleasant exhaustion was brought to you by the letter B and the number 40.