AHA Previews Asheville HomebrewCon 2025 in April Members Webinar

Three years is a long time to wait. HomebrewCon vanished from the calendar in 2024, absorbed into the Great American Beer Festival in Denver amid falling post-COVID attendance and AHA restructuring, then skipped again in 2025 as the organization completed its transition to full independence from the Brewers Association. Now it's back, fully standalone, and heading to Asheville on June 19-20 for its 46th edition. The American Homebrewers Association's next Zymurgy Live webinar, scheduled for April 23 at 4pm MDT, is the practical primer for making the most of that return.

The members-only session, titled "HomeBrewCon is Back, Baby!," assembles four panelists with direct operational knowledge of the event: Chris "Crispy" Frey, Mary Spivey, Jim Cope, and Paul West, drawn from HomebrewCon's organizing team and the AHA education committee. The format serves both first-timers and veterans who last attended San Diego in 2023, where roughly 1,300 AHA members showed up for a three-day run.

Use the April 23 session strategically. The education seminar tracks are the core differentiator between HomebrewCon and a standard club gathering, so ask Frey and Spivey which tracks are best suited to style-specific or technique-focused brewers. Push on Club Night logistics at Harrah's Cherokee Center: whether pours are ticketed or open, and how early to arrive before the floor fills. Ask Cope and West about NHC Final Round Judging on June 18, the day before the main conference opens, specifically whether judge volunteers need to book accommodation for the 18th and what the sign-in window looks like. Get the Homebrew Expo floor plan details and which vendor categories will be represented, since on-site gear and ingredient purchases can offset travel costs for working brewers. And ask directly: what is the single most common scheduling mistake a first-time attendee makes?

The venue split is worth clarifying before you book. The main conference events, Club Night, the Homebrew Expo, and all HBC education seminars, run at the Harrah's Cherokee Center in downtown Asheville. The NHC Awards Ceremony and Knock-Out Party on the evening of June 20 move to the Renaissance hotel. If you're attending both, factor that transition into your logistics.

Asheville earns its Beer City USA reputation with over 20 breweries pouring more than 200 local craft beers on any given day, and the city draws over 10 million visitors annually, so accommodation moves fast around major events. Build margin into your booking on either side of the June 19-20 dates.

The AHA's independence adds real weight to this edition. After operating under the Brewers Association since 1983, the organization achieved full 501(c) nonprofit status in 2025, seating a founding board led by chairperson Shawna Cormier alongside Drew Beechum, Sandy Cockerham, Gary Glass, and Greg Roskopf, with Julia Herz as executive director. HomebrewCon 2026 is the first flagship event the newly independent AHA has staged on its own terms.

If you're not an AHA member, the webinar is off the table, but HomebrewCon registration and the full schedule are publicly available through the official HomebrewCon website. The NHC runs nine First Round judging sites across the country before the Final Round lands in Asheville, meaning non-members can engage the competition circuit independently and plan their June attendance using the public schedule without a membership requirement.

More than 162,710 entries have been evaluated since the NHC's first competition in Boulder in 1979. In Asheville this June, that number grows again.