After Friday night’s Slow Food Nation Press Preview, the main events began Saturday morning, with two sessions scheduled for the day, and two more on Sunday. I volunteered to pour beer and answer questions in the beer pavilion and Beer Curator — don’t you just love that title — Dave McLean assigned me to the cask bar, one of three area in the beer pavilion. There was a bar for bottled and canned beer, one for draft beer, and the third for cask.

After Friday night’s Slow Food Nation Press Preview, the main events began Saturday morning, with two sessions scheduled for the day, and two more on Sunday. I volunteered to pour beer and answer questions in the beer pavilion and Beer Curator — don’t you just love that title — Dave McLean assigned me to the cask bar, one of three area in the beer pavilion. There was a bar for bottled and canned beer, one for draft beer, and the third for cask.

Once people starting arriving, the time just whizzed by, it was so different from the typical beer festival. First of all, there were very few frat boy types looking only to get a buzz. And even better, the majority of people who bellied up to the cask bar were actually interested in learning what cask beer was and which one they should try. It was so refreshing to have people truly receptive and open-minded, but perhaps the most fun was trying to pick a beer for someone, based on what they normally liked.

Me and Arne Johnson, head brewer at Marin Brewing, manning the cask bar in the beer pavilion.

Inside the main building that housed most of the 16 taste pavilions (beer, bread and native foods were outside by the entrance).

For more photos from the first Slow Food Nation convention in San Francisco, visit the photo gallery.