From previous stories you may remember I’m a homebrewer. While living in Phoenix my club, the Arizona Society of Homebrewers (ASH) found a great opportunity to promote the club - go to the annual National Homebrewer’s Conference in Las Vegas.

I called KalenBorg, an old friend, and homebrewer, living back in Minnesota. We talked and decided to meet up in Las Vegas, and split room costs of the conference. Our plan was to meet at the airport and take the rideshare van to the Riviera, where the conference was. My plane was an hour late, so I missed KalenBorg at the airport.

KalenBorg's all-time favorite beers...

1. Lite Ice - he's fighting with the Beer Advocate people for giving it a D-
2. Old Milwaukee - taste as great as it's name
3. Red Stripe - It's BEER. Hooray beer!
4. Corona - Miles Away From Ordinary
5. Keystone Light - bottled beer taste in a can... Mmmmmmmm
6. Pabst Blue Ribbon - PBR me ASAP
7. Labatt Blue - A whole lot can happen, Out of the Blue
8. Pig's Eye Pilsner - Pig's Eye was the original name for Saint Paul, MN, yummmy
9. Red Dog - a finely crafted beer from the Plank Road Brewery
10. Old English - most underrated beer ever

We met up at the Riviera registration desk, and KalenBorg was wearing a homebrew shirt. I told him to hide until I finished registration. The Riviera had higher rates for conference attendees - assuming we’d gamble less. I booked the room separate from the conference to save money. I had heard they would renege on the lower rate if they found you were part of the conference group, and KalenBorg was there wearing a brewing shirt.

We got our luggage up to the room and headed to the conference registration. The theme of the whole event was Beer and Loafing in Las Vegas, an homage to gonzo! Now with our conference badges we were off to start drinking home brewed beer. The conference had a hospitality suite staffed to pour homebrew 24 hours a day.

We bought a Styrofoam cooler to chill and store beers we brought to share with each other, and the commemorative beers. It’s always fun to sample beer you cannot get where you live and to compare friends’s homebrew. We got the cooler, and filled it with free hotel ice and our beers.

Part of the conference was the National Homebrew Competition and second round judging. Judging for the competition had started before we even arrived.

The first night’s theme was Pro Brewers Night and there was some fantastic beer from large and small craft breweries. I vaguely remember sampling Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot Barleywine Ale and Stone’s Arrogant Bastard multiple times. Both were high alcohol ales, and thus I was headed for that place that makes me feel bad the next day.

Sometime into the long drunken night I lost KalenBorg. He just disappeared; nobody had seen him in hours. I was drunk, the room was closing and most of the vendors had locked up their craft beer for the night. I hit the hospitality suite for one last beer I didn’t really need, and headed up to the room.

When I got to the room I discovered two things – KalenBorg sleeping naked, and two cases of homebrew. A spare towel took care of the first problem, and then I had to investigate the two cases of beer.

The National Homebrew Competition had evaluated the second round of beers and sorted them as to which beers advanced to the Best of Show (BOS) round. The BOS would determine the best overall beer of the whole conference. The beers that didn’t make it to the BOS were placed in the hospitality suite. To this day I can only guess KalenBorg thought we needed two cases of nationally ranked beer that missed the cutoff for the BOS. Some of these may have still scored gold, but three bottles are required to enter. The rest were in our room?!?!

KalenBorg woke up and headed into the bathroom, still naked. On his way back (without the towel I threw over him) he made a wrong turn and entered the hallway and started to wander off down the hotel hallway. I had to get up to make sure I could keep him out of jail. KalenBorg's wife would have been pissed at me if I allowed him to be arrested. I had promised to return him undamaged, and I can only imagine the events (and damage) if KalenBorg had to spend a night or two in a Las Vegas jail! He wandered back and forth along the hallway corridor, not really knowing where he was or where he was going. I got him back in the room to prevent a security fiasco, and he went back to bed.

A couple hours later he awoke and headed to the bathroom again. After finishing in the bathroom he took that same wrong turn and headed back out into the hotel hallway, AGAIN. Still naked he walked back and forth. He woke me when he got up, now I had to get up and look for him in the hallway again. I yelled at him to get back into the room, but he didn’t acknowledge. I watched him as he started to walk all the way down the hall towards the elevator!

“Oh SHIT!”

I ducked back in the room to grab a shirt. While doing so I have visions of KalenBorg walking all the way into the casino floor naked only to asking some old lady for a glass of water?

As I was getting my shoes on, there was a very light knock at the door. I expected security, but it was KalenBorg. I got him back in the room again and he went bed again, after I yelled at him to put some damn clothes on!

He wasn’t completely done for the night! The next time he woke up he stumbled and fell on the Styrofoam cooler. To say the cooler exploded into a million pieces was an understatement. He tried to clean up the mess by scooping ice with his bare hands and hauling it to the bathroom sink. In the process he spilled half the ice on his bed. It didn’t take long before his bed was a soaking wet mess. KalenBorg tried to flip the mattress, so he could use the dry side. He fell over and ended up with the mattress half on the bed frame and half on the floor. He gave up, kicked the mattress so it was mostly on the floor and slept on it right there.

Morning meant two things, time to play some Judas Priest LOUDLY, and tell KalenBorg a story. He asked me to turn the music off, and didn’t believe the story I told. After he saw the beers and Styrofoam he started to question his beliefs, and may have started to think of himself as immortal for surviving. We both needed time to recover from self-induced alcohol poisoning. Later, that afternoon, we purchased another Styrofoam cooler.

We did lunch with a large group of homebrewers at the new Hofbräuhaus. Lunch at the Hofbräuhaus included a competition where competitors had to hold a large mug of beer straight out with an extended arm until every other contestant gave up. I entered the competition, and the first thing I did was sample the beer. Aaarghh, it was extra strong iced tea not beer. I lowered my arm, and was disqualified about half way through, but I was really bored knowing it was only iced tea. After lunch we had the shuttle drop us off at the Las Vegas Hilton. Being Sci-Fi geeks we both wanted to see the Star Trek Experience. On the way back I suggested a cab, since I was sweaty and hot from the dessert heat, and still a bit hung over. KalenBorg said,

“We don’t need no stinking cab, we need to tough it out.”

When we arrived back at the Riviera KalenBorg’s feet looked like this;

That evening was Club Night; the theme was for each club to have their own original theme. Many clubs dressed looking as dorky as possible (KalenBorg and I didn’t dress up). By the time we hit our drinking stride we had a case of the beer that almost made the BOS near the pool. We were enjoying them with some fine Cuban cigars (at lease I was told they were fine Cuban cigars when I bought them). A friend, who knew about the beer from the National Homebrew Competition checked on us. He told us they no longer needed the beers and had given them away the night before. So, at least we wouldn't be thrown out of the conference, and KalenBorg would remain outside prison at least one more day. He left and came back with a sheet to figure out what styles each beers was, by cross matching the number on the bottle cap with the number on the spreadsheet. Up to that point we’d been playing the mystery beer game.