This year we gathered at the Roseburg Rod & Gun Club, May 16-18 and the theme was May The Yeast Be With You.
Although the weather was predicted to be rainy, we are happy to report that Bacchus, Dionysus, and Silenus all coordinated with Zeus to grant us a wonderful weekend (both in weather & comradery) This year’s Rendezvous competition showcased 28 beers and 19 other types of adult beverage (wine, mead, cider, etc.) The Umpqua Valley Brewers Guild members were delighted to have the Hellgate Homebrewers co-sponsor this event at the Roseburg Rod & Gun Club. Special thanks also to Hops Direct, Five Star Chemicals, and Greg & Debra Mahan for significant raffle and breakfast donations. In addition, we were glad to welcome back Robert & Gayla Rochambeau and their awesome BeerBQ rig (giving us four more taps as well as the ability to cook those magnificent beef briskets for Saturday’s dinner).
Really love the pavilion and surrounding park-like feel of our event site by the North Umpqua River. Much more space for camping & RV units as well as a larger pavilion with plenty of tables and electrical connections for our use. We are very fortunate to have such a great option available to us to showcase Douglas County and provide an exceptional venue for this gathering of talented home brewers, vintners, mazers, cider makers and sourdough artisans. We also welcomed members of the Rogue Valley Homebrewers club this year and hope to see more of them here next year.
Started off with a beautiful & sunny Friday afternoon, so getting everything setup was pretty easy. Hops Direct, Five Star Chemicals, and UVBG club members provided a fabulous pile of items to stuff in the raffle prize sacks. We also had set up for a silent auction for the “higher end” donation items. The Rod & Gun club site manager had been cleaning up branches and limbs from the area the previous week and had created a big wood pile for our first campfire. Lots of potluck food arrived with the participants and after a delightful early evening of eating & rekindling friendships, the bonfire was lit. With over 30 folks gathered around the campfire we declared Sexy Beer night to be open (so lots of interesting beers were set up to open too). Unfortunately, we didn’t get a picture of the beers that were sampled that night. Fortunately all the Sexy (and strange and interesting) beer containers ended up in the recycle bin and got photographed later. We really do need to emphasize that not all these beers were sampled on Friday night, but rather over the whole event.
Saturday morning began with breakfast options that included: Coffee, Tea, Scrambled Eggs (provided by Greg & Debora Mahan), Jimmy Dean Sausage, Hash Brown patties, and Toasted Sliders with a big dollop of Sausage Gravy.
Registration, organizing beverage competition entries, and raffle ticket sales began after breakfast. We ended up with 28 beer entries (almost every style was represented). In addition, we had 19 “not beer” entries that included wines, meads, ciders, and even a distillate. As a side, novel item we had Hop Water available to taste! Light lunch of pot luck items and then in the late afternoon, we called for the last votes to be placed on favorite beers and “not beers”. Votes were tallied and winners announced.
Hellgate’s Wayne DeRutye won the gold for beer, followed by UVBG’s Hiroshi Oki with a silver medal for his Porter and Mandy Lindsay took the bronze for Hellgate with a Orange/Vanilla Cream-Cicle (sic) Ale. UVBG’s Ronnie Stansbury took the People’s Choice award for her Rhubarb-Strawberry Wine, Mandy Lindsay got a silver for her Organic Plum wine (taking her second medal of the day—Go Mandy!) Rounding out the “not beer” awards was the bronze medal awarded to UVBG’s Robin Oki for her delicious Blueberry Mead. Both Mandy and Robin are still awaiting their medals for “not beers”.
During the day, several folks enjoyed playing corn hole and many of us enjoyed watching them when they played wearing beer goggles. For those of you not familiar with beer goggles, the lenses distort your vision and give you a pretty good idea about what being impaired really means. It was interesting that the lenses were actually rated as to the level of associated blood alcohol…we had a selection that simulated mild intoxication to being well over the legal limit. They are currently used in high schools to try to get students to understand the dangers of vision related issues especially as would relate to driving situations. We were told the best way to get students to use them is to have them toss a ball back & forth. (It was suggested that using water balloons on a hot day might be even more effective!)
Lots of raffle tickets were drawn and plenty of fun filled sacks of goodies won. Again, thanks to Carla at Hops Direct for being so generous again this year with a fabulous selection of hops. In addition, she included lots of their awesome hop soap bars. Last year it was one of the most often mentioned “cool” special items in the raffle prize. Lots of extra big smiles for finding one of those soaps in with the hops and PBW tablets (provided by Five Star Chemicals) that were in almost every raffle bag. The silent auction closed before dinner and winners were announced. Lots of fun items donated by UVBG members including a Pub Dart Board, a wonderful old wood cane, a two roller grain mill, a vintage wooden cork remover, and a table top adjustable height wine corker/bottle capper to name a few of the items. With everyone gathered, we were able to get a group photo before setting up for our evening feast.
Next came an awesome dinner that show cased several beef briskets, slow cooked in the BeerBQ by Robert & Gayla Rochambeau. Stir fried veggies and quite a few potluck items that included some delightfully delicious desserts…of which several of us unabashedly had seconds to offset all the healthy & tasty choices spread out on the table before us. Our photographer only got a couple pictures as the evening feast started…and they were of Josh turning out sourdough flatbreads from his fabulous RoccBox (portable, propane powered, personal pizza oven). So you’ll just have to imagine how tasty dinner was that evening!
Everyone loosened their belts after dinner and headed out to enjoy a pleasant evening around the fire pit. There were some more “odd” and favorite adult beverages enjoyed during the next hours. Lots of stories were told (some even believable) as we enjoyed a warm, dry evening (weather forecasts were wrong and we had pretty lovely conditions through the entire weekend! As the fire blazed, we even had a smattering of music with 2 ukuleles and a drummer giving everyone an occasional memory jog back to some old favorite tunes.
Coffee, Tea, and lots of fond, new memories filled everyone’s morning as we broke camp and did our pavilion cleanup. We bid goodbye to everyone, wished them safe journeys home, and confirmed that Greg & Debora were headed to a truck dealership that was open on Sundays.
Thanks to everyone for making this such a memorable event!