AHA Update with Brew Guru Gary Glass – BeerSmith Podcast #134

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Gary Glass, the Director of the American Homebrewers Association joins me this week to discuss the Great American Beer Festival, Brew Guru, Pro-Am Beer Competition, homebrew laws, new hop products and more.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (43:07)

Today my guest is Gary Glass. Gary is Director of the 40,000+ member American Homebrewers Association, the national organization in the US dedicated to home brewing. Gary joins me to update us on a variety of news including new homebrew laws, the Brew Guru app, new hop products, AHA events and much more.
We start with a short discussion about the success of this year’s Homebrewcon and plans for next year’s event in Minneapolis in June.
Gary tells us about his recent trip to Yakima valley where a large percentage of US hops are grown and some of the advances he observed there.
He also describes a new product (hop powder) in development that may be available to home brewers in a few years, along with some of the new flavors coming with recent hop variety releases.
We talk about next week’s Great American Beer festival, hosted by the US Brewers Association in Denver, Colorado. It is the largest craft beer event in the US each year.
Gary discusses the Pro-Am competition where home brewers and craft brewers team up to compete in beer brewing. The event is hosted as part of GABF.
Gary explains the close relationship between craft beer brewers and home brewers.
We talk about “Learn to Homebrew” day which is coming up on November 5th this year and Gary tells us how we can support this event.
After security the legal ability to brew in all 50 states, Gary tells us about current legal challenges with serving homebrew due to a myriad of state laws, many of which severely limit where and when home brewed beer can be served.
He also tells us about progress being made in many states including a recent law passed in California that clarifies the situation.
We discuss the new AHA phone/tablet app called Brew Guru. The app is designed for AHA members and lets you access a large number of online articles on home brewing as well as map and take advantage of nearby discounts and deals from craft breweries and home brew shops using the map feature.
Gary tells us why you should become a member of the AHA and some of the many advantages of membership.
He shares is closing thoughts.

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