Dixie Cup Speakers
The Foam Rangers are proud to announce the speakers at the 2007 Dixie Cup. Steve Grossman, Randy Mosher, Mark Wedge, and Bev Blackwood will be featured at the milli-conference on Saturday morning. Once again, for the umpteenth year, Fred Eckhardt will lead us through another great pairing of food and beer on Friday night.
Steve Grossman
Steve Grossman, co-founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.
Randy Mosher
A homebrewer since 1984, Randy Mosher frequently writes and lectures about beer and brewing. He is the author of Radical Brewing and The Brewer’s Companion and is the regular homebrew columnist for All About Beer magazine, is a frequent contributor to Zymurgy, and serves on the American Homebrewers Association Governing Committee. He is also active in the Chicago Beer Society, the country’s largest and oldest independent beer appreciation society.
His brewing passions tend to the obscure. He has researched many forgotten beer styles and brewed them into life. Northern German “outlaw” beers, English spiced ales, and in particular, variations on the white beer family have all attracted his interest. His other great homebrewing interest is fabricating equipment, and his own homebrewed system, the Buckapound Brewery, continues to take over his basement.
In his business life, he is a graphic designer and marketing consultant specializing in food and beverages and especially, you guessed it, beer.
Mark Wedge
Mark Wedge is the Brewing and Operations manager at Rahr & Sons Brewing Company in Fort Worth, Texas. He has been a homebrewer since 1992 and is a BJCP National judge. His responsibilities at the brewery include recipe development, label and packaging design, and managing the bottling line. Mark started his tenure at Rahr & Sons by volunteering during brewing and bottling.
Rahr & Sons Brewing Company was founded by Fritz Rahr in 2004 and is focused mainly on German style lagers and ales. The core beers, produced year round, include Munich Helles, Vienna Lager, Schwarzbier, and a “Double” Kölsch. Seasonal offerings include Maibock, Hefeweizen, Oktoberfest, and an English Strong Dark Ale.
Bev Blackwood
Bev Blackwood is the Brewery Production Manager for Saint Arnold Brewing Company in Houston, Texas. He started hanging out at the brewery as a volunteer server on Saturday tours over a decade ago and joined the company as a brewer on May 30, 2006.
Bev is a BJCP Certified judge and has won numerous homebrewing awards, including Best-of-Show at the Dixie Cup, Crescent City Competition, and the Cactus Challenge. He started homebrewing in 1997 and has held various officer positions in the Foam Rangers since then (his current, unofficial, position is that of Was-Was-Was-Was-Was-Was-Waz).
Saint Arnold Brewing Company is Texas’ oldest craft brewery. Founded in 1994, they are in their 13th year of operation. They make five year-round beers: Amber Ale, Brown Ale, Texas Wheat, Fancy Lawnmower Beer, and Elissa IPA. Five seasonal beers are also made: Winter Stout, Spring Bock, Summer Pils, Oktoberfest, and Christmas Ale. Additionally, the Divine Reserve series, introduced in 2005, features single-batch, high-gravity styles that change with each release.
Fred Eckhardt
Fred Eckhardt is America’s original award winning beer writer since 1969, when he first published A Treatise on Lager Beer, the first American homebrewing text and the first to feature all-malt brewing in the home.
Fred is a regular contributor to the Celebrator Beer News and All About Beer and was the beer columnist for the Oregonian from 1984 to 1990. His articles have appeared in many other beer magazines including Zymurgy and American Brewer, as well as many newspapers including the Seattle Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Orange County Register and San Francisco Examiner. He is also the author of Essentials of Beer Style and Saké (USA). A BJCP National judge, he has also judged at the GABF since 1982.
For reasons no one really understands, Fred has been the “liberal com-symp pinko mascot” of the Dixie Cup since 1987 when he showed a slide show of Brew Kettles of the Pacific Northwest. He has been the host of a beer and food tasting at the Dixie Cup, known as the Fred Tasting, since 1990.