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I started this post on June 26 and never finished it. I never wrote about Friday and Saturday, but I’ll get around to it sometime. I just wanted to go ahead and get the pics posted. Some pics we took, some are Kelly’s and some Casey’s.

What a great experience!!! The 2008 National Homebrewers Conference in Cincinnati was a blast.

We left Auburn early Tuesday morning and put the kids on a bus in Birmingham to visit their grandparents and aunt/uncle/cousins in Memphis. We met a Birmingham brewer for breakfast and a good chat and then made our way to Huntsville. Priscilla dropped me at Rick’s and went to visit Tonya. After some homebrew sampling and lunch, Rick, Brant and I took our time loading the van with kegs and the RCB portable bar and headed down to Dan’s office around 5, where we had a great pre-RCB meeting meeting with Dan, Ridley, Quacker and Craig. The RCB monthly meeting was at Bramon’s, and there has never been so much beer at a RCB meeting. Beer from 40 kegs was sampled and given a pass/fail/last resort score.

Priscilla and I spent the night at John and Debbie’s, and on Wednesday morning I kept my tradition of having a beer in the shower whenever we stay at their house. After a short 6-hour drive filled with great conversation, we arrived in Cincinnati in time for the Pub Crawl. I managed to spend less than $200 at the Party Source, but picked up some excellent commercial examples of some styles I want to study in the near future. The best stop on the pub crawl was the German Brewpub, where we convinced the accordian and drum band to play German heavy metal and ended the night with Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird. It was great to meet and share some beer with Tim Saurrwein of the MALT homebrew club in Maryland (http://www.maltclub.org/).

After the opening toast of the NHC on Thursday, it was RCB’s time to provide beer in the Hospitality Suite. We emptied 11 kegs and could have emptied more if we’d had them taken off the truck.

Wednesday and Thursday were just the tip of the iceburg. I just haven’t been able to get around to writing about Friday and Saturday yet. That’s were most everything happened. Maybe I can find the time soon.

Friday – Pro Brewers Night

Saturday – Club Night