The Hetch Hetchy Hop Heads were established in the early 1990s on the mid-peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area. The name is derived from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir situated within the Yosemite Valley, which is replenished by pure snowmelt from the Sierra Nevadas. This water, devoid of virtually any minerals, serves as an ideal medium for the brewing of various styles of beer.  The goal of the club is to further the hobby of homebrewing through community and friendship.  Club members played an important role in the formative years of the Northern California Homebrew Festival (NCHF) filling both the role of chair and serving on the board of directors.  The club’s size has fluctuated over time, but a small core group remains.  Even those members that have relocated outside of the area continue to return annually to NCHF to rejoin their fellow Hop Heads, where their booth will be serving homebrew late into the evening.

Upstate New York Homebrewers Association is one of the oldest homebrew clubs in the country ( we think 3^rd or 4^th oldest) and a big part of the Upstate New York beer scene. Founded in Rochester, NY 1979 in it has recently risen in popularity and grown to over 100 active paying members.  They hold Monthly meetings the second Tuesday of every month at Sager Stoneyard Pub on Sager Street in Rochester’s University Ave neighborhood.  Meetings entail announcements, educational talks on a variety of subjects like Yeast propagation, mashing techniques, Oyxgen ingress and more. Club members can take advantage of our online grain store where grain and supplies can be ordered and picked up at monthly meetings.  Club members can also participate in beer hunter where if they visit an out of town brewery the club will pay for them to bring back beer to share with the rest of the club members. They also hold a monthly prize raffle for members and run a brewer of the month mini competition at every meeting.  Brewers who submit entries are judged in a side by side blind tasting. Winners receive prize money and accrue points towards an end of the year “Brewer of the Year” award.  Big events for the club include professional brewery collaborations, team brew-off competitions, Octoberfest and their main yearly BJCP sanctioned competition.  This years the competition will be held at Genesee brewing (who is always an amazing host) September 21 & 22. This will be the 46^th year of the competition and many prizes and ribbons will be awarded at our Octoberfest event at Ellison Park On October 5^th.  This past year UNYHA started a Hall of Fame and inducted 4 members to it’s inaugural class- Jack Mansur ( who we estimate has tried around 15,000 unique beers)  Adam Odegard ( who has won brewer of the year more times than we can count), Steve Hodos ( our longest running member, time president, BJCP pioneer and ran AHA comp regionals)  and Paul Guarrancini ( a 30 year plus member turned pro, beer educator & advice giver).  We will ask for submissions every two years for additional hall of fame submissions.