Here is the Day 2 update from the California Craft Beer Summit…
It started with a blindfold on for Sightless Tasting led by Dr. Toby Wexler from SensPoint Design who showed emphatically that though we are primarily (85%) a visual creature that you should still use and hone that other 15% too. We were passes three separate containers with blends inside and were asked to describe what we smelled. Grapefruit, mango, turmeric passed by, cedar passes by as did coconut and chocolate. Then, we all carefully reached in out to taste four beers. I guessed one right and was just as sure on another that I was wrong on. Probably the best seminar of the two days.
Judging by the crowd and amount of questions afterward, the Kviek (ca-Veek) seminar from Omega Yeast was an attraction. We learned the origin of the yeast, how a blogger just went from Norwegian Farmhouse to Farmhouse to collect the strains that made up this truly home brew yeast which is still being dissected to find its properties. Apparently, it is a cross of a wild yeast and a commercial one. Much of the science flew past me at light speed but speed is one of the attributes of the yeast as it does it’s job very fast.
From there it was back to the Expo to do circuits of the beer and the food with a mid-afternoon stop for a talk on cannabis led by Lori Ajax, the chief of the California Bureau of Cannabis Control. She talked about the process in which marijuana can be state legal to sell. If you have a love of filling out forms and constant oversight, then you would be well suited to either or all of the cultivating, distributing or retail channels.
With that the second day was done. Next up, the Festival.
