NCHF: A Photo Essay

The ZenHusband and I attended the
Northern California Homebrewer's Festival last weekend.
(You did know ZH is a long-time avid homebrewer, didn't you?)

The whole weekend was a blast, but the highlight, for me,
was the Brewer's Dinner Friday night.

O.M.G.

No, really:
O.M.F.G.

This dinner was TO DIE FOR.
It was six courses of Oktoberfest-inspired deliciousness
crafted by renowned Homebrew Chef Sean Paxton.

That's him below, the one in the chef's jacket
waving at all of the hungry people who are about to worship him.

We ate great food and drank great beer -
a different craft brew to complement each course - for three hours.

The meal was outdoors and had a casual picnic-y kind of feel,
including family-style service, but that didn't diminish
the incredible, gourmet-level food.

The whole dinner was amazing
- from the beet salad starter to the tangy sauerkraut
to the mouth-watering bratwurst,
to the melt-in-your-mouth sauerbrauten.

My two personal favorites were the "David Hasselhoff"
- a pretzel-crumb coated pork cutlet
served with warm German purple potato salad -
and the Wild Mushroom Strudel.

Ohmygawd, my knees are weak and I'm salivating
like Pavlov's pets just thinking about
the savory heaven that was that mushroom strudel.

For dessert: Hop-infused ice cream.
It tasted like green hops right off the vine, but cold and creamy.
ZH dipped his in his schwarzbeir to make a Beer Float. :)

As I tweeted that night:

This is like Iron Chef meets Oktoberfest!
What's the German word for heaven? Mmmmmm. ;D

After dinner, we all stumbled to our tents, very pleasantly sated.
(Did I mention this whole festival was at a lake resort in the foothills
and all of the attendees were camping for the whole weekend?
No? Okay, now you know.)

After sleeping off that little bit o' German heaven,
we were up bright and early (as far as you know)
to get ready for the actual Festival:

The ZenHusband being the beer addict,
um I mean, brewing enthusiast that he is,
we've been to our fair share of beer festivals and conferences.

And I have to say, this was one of the best
and most laid-back events we've ever been to.

Some of that atmosphere, you can probably chalk up to location.
Northern California is a pretty mellow part of the state
(not counting the politicos in Sacramento).

But I think part of it also came from the fact
that almost everyone there was a homebrewer.

Usually at events like these you get a mix of brewers and,
shall we say, "drinkers". And there's almost always a
rowdy "frat boy" element that harshes the mellow.
But, here, there was none of that.

Oh, there was plenty of drinking going on ...

(Yeah, those are both taps.)

And lots of good fun ...

... but it was still more of a connoisseur event than a kegger.

One of my favorite elements of Beer Festivals are the booths.
There are usually contests for the best decorations
and some of the clubs really go all out.
(If you embiggen the photo above,
you'll see that's a working chandelier.)

This year's theme for the NCHF was "Oktoberfest".
A lot of the clubs did a great job with their decorations.
But this one was my favorite:

If you look a little closer, you'll see that the serving wench and the cow
(which I believe were made of papier mache!)
are a tap! Three taps, actually ...

Yep, you could pour yourself three different kinds of beer
from that cute little cow's udder.
Talk about improving on nature. ;)
I was only disappointed that one of them wasn't a milk stout.

:)

And did I mention that proceeds of all of this
laid-back and golden delicious fun go to charity?

Win. Win. Win.

And this concludes Zen's "how I spent my vacation" photo essay.
Thanks for playing!