5. The worst part of the motel was maintenance. My wife and I seriously discussed moving to another motel. The bed was total crap.
What part were you in? I always try to get a room in the Royal Palm tower and they're pretty good.
He was probably in the Regency Tower like us. What a crappy place. Only one elevator worked (barely), the wallpaper was coming off the wall in places, no refrigerators, and the beds/pillows SUCKED. If it ever goes back to the Town and Country, I will be staying at a different hotel.
My impressions, outside of the crap Regency Tower:
- Man, I love the people at NHC. I love finding my beer family every year and adding about 15-20 people to that circle each time. Can't wait for the next time we get to go to NHC!
- The seminars were pretty basic, outside of a handful of them of course (Czech lagers, mead panel, mead recipes, and blending).
- The BJCP judges reception was AMAZEBALLS. Drinking bottles of Utopian and Tart of Darkness was great. The presentations here were better than 80% of the actual NHC presentations.
- I drank a lot of mead.
- The Final round judging was so well organized. Kudos to the organizers there, especially Bruce and Janis, for putting on a great judging experience. I met a ton of great judges there, from Recognized to GM2, that all had something for me to learn. And hey, the Standard American Lager we picked out at mini-BOS got 2nd BOS! Pretty neat!
- The AHA should have made it
crystal clear on what beer we could have brought into the banquet. Many people did not bring any beer to share or sniped the beer our table was saving for the awards right off our table. All of that could have been solved by simply telling people they could only bring commercial beer in. Several of our friends ended up taking their commercial beer back to their room instead of bringing it to the banquet.
- Am I the only one who thought the majority of Club Night beers were sub-par?? Sure, there were some awesome clubs who brought their A-game and some awesome mead makers there, but I had about 50% crappy beer until I just stuck around the clubs that had the good stuff. Like... butter bomb Pilsners, aectic ciders, sock-smelling gueuzes, acrid stouts, etc. I watered a lot of plants that night until I found the booths that had well made beers. I actually asked a couple of the clubs how they selected beers and the general consensus was "We asked for kegs and got kegs." No selection process? Dang.