“Probably 90 percent of them or more hated it,” he explained. “But the 10 percent who loved it, loved it.”

Over the past three decades, awareness of Sierra Nevada has grown considerably, but it isn’t because of ambitious advertising or marketing efforts. Sierra Nevada has focused on quality and consistency, and have encouraged people who value those things to give their beer a shot. Some of those early folks were writers, and they undoubtedly helped generate momentum.

Today there are industry publications that do great service for craft beer, but Sierra Nevada recognizes that it’s often beer bloggers who are spreading information and shaping the tastes of drinkers in the U.S. and beyond. Your passion drives Sierra Nevada to continue creating, tinkering and, if they’re doing things right, pleasing palates of more than 10 percent.

Sierra Nevada are sponsors of this year’s Beer Bloggers Conference participating in our trade show and Beer Social event, and they’ve hinted that they’re packing a few fun beers to pour and enjoy with you.

Currently, Sierra Nevada has quite a few projects up its sleeve, and would love to chat with bloggers about their second brewery in North Carolina, their new tasting room in Berkeley, CA, beer projects like the Ovila collaboration with the monks at the Abbey of New Clairvaux, their estate hops winding skyward, and whatever other relevant topics pop up.

So beer bloggers – come curious, and come thirsty!

The post Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and Beer Bloggers: Good Times Afoot appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.

By the way, World Class Beer doesn’t brew beer. We’re an association of craft and specialty beer minded distributors. And that gets me a lot of questions each time I attend the conference. Most people immediately ask me – why does a beer distributor want to get in front of a group of bloggers?

Fair question. We’re not as exciting as a brewer in most ways. We don’t malt, mill, mash, lauter, sparge, boil, ferment or package anything. In many ways, that makes us far less interesting to bloggers and consumers in general than most brewers. But distributors are an essential part of the story of variety and choice in American beer and it’s a story we love to tell.

On the surface, beer distributors are the guys and girls who make deliveries to the hundreds of thousands of licensed beer retailers (bars, restaurants, liquor stores, grocery stores, etc.) in America every day. We drive the trucks, take the orders, operate the warehouses, and all that not-so-glamorous stuff.

Look a little deeper and you’ll see that beer distributors are a big part of the equation that has given America the largest selection of craft and specialty beers in the world. We bring thousands of breweries from across the US and the globe to your favorite stores and we do it for a fraction of the cost that it would require via a regular shipping service. Our sales people work to get your favorite brands on the shelf and keep them fresh. And we promote craft and specialty beer in your communities by hosting, organizing and sponsoring beer events.

We’re beer passionate and knowledgeable. You’ll find that many of us are very beer passionate and knowledgeable. Many of us are Certified Cicerones ™ and BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) beer judges. We spend our afternoons and evenings working to educate the wait staff at restaurants, or do beer samplings at liquor stores so that people can better understand our products.

For those of you attending the North American Beer Bloggers Conference in Boston this July, we hope to see you there. We’d love to have a beer (or two!) with you and look forward to helping make it a fun and educational experience for all of us.

About Bob Mack:

Passionate about craft and specialty beer, and bringing information and education to industry professionals and to the public in order to help build brands and increase the effectiveness of beer retailers to succeed in the craft and specialty beer category. Bob’s focus has been on eLearning, digital tools and social media, all of which can reach large audiences in an effective manner in a cost effective fashion.

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorldClassBeerIN

On Twitter: @WorldClassBeer

The post Guest Post: World Class Beer at BBC13 appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.

Harpoon is well underway in the planning process of that special night; they have started to work on the food menu and, perhaps more importantly, the beer menu for the evening.

In thinking about what beers to have on tap for you that night, the good people at Harpoon thought it would be great to brew a special beer on their new 10-barrel pilot system just for that night’s dinner!  After some back and forth about what style to brew, they asked if it was possible to let you all decide. Our Answer? Of Course it is!

So tell us, Beer Bloggers, what style of beer would you like Harpoon Brewery to make for you?

If you have a style in mind, let us know in the comment section below.  We will take your style submissions until next Friday, May 24^th.  From there, Harpoon’s brewers will whittle the submissions down to 4 or 5 style options and put them up for a vote among you and your readers.  We’ll send out a link to the poll as soon as it’s up and running.

Per Harpoon, the only real “rules” for style guidelines is that it’s got to be something that they can feasibly brew in time to have it on tap for July 27^th.  That means that it can’t be a lager or require ingredients airlifted from an exotic locale.

The winning style will be announced via the pint of beer handed to you as you make your way into Harpoon’s new beer hall for dinner.

In working with the folks at Harpoon Brewery, they’re really excited about hosting everyone on July 27th, and we at BBC can’t wait to see what’s brewed.

Now let the style submissions begin!

The post Beer Bloggers: The Harpoon is in Your Hands appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.

The Massachusetts Beverage Alliance will be hosting the Live Beer Blogging Event at Burke Distributing. The participating breweries of Live Beer Blogging are:

• Backlash Beer Co. (Boston, MA) – Helder Pimentel & Maggie Foley
• Baxter Brewing (Lewiston, ME)  – Luke Livingston
• Fatty Bampkins (So. Casco, ME) – Brandon Geer
• Foolproof Brewing Co. (Pawtucket, R.I.)  – Nick Garrison and Kyle Pauly
• Grey Sail Brewing Co. Of Rhode Island (Westerly, R.I.)  – Alan Brinton & Josh Letourneau
• Idle Hands Brewing Co. (Everett, MA) – Chris & Grace Tkach
• Newburyport Brewing Co. (Newburyport, MA) – Bill Fisher, Chris Webb & Mike Robinson
• Night Shift Brewing Co. (Everett, MA)  – Rob Burns, Mike O’Mara, Mike Oxton
• Notch Brewing Co. (Ipswich, MA)  – Chris Lohring
• Rising Tide (Portland, ME) – Heather Sanborn
• Somerville Brewing Co. – AKA: Slumbrew (Somerville, MA) – Jeff Leiter and Caitlin Jewell
• Thomas Hooker Brewing Co. (Bloomfield, CT) – Curt Cameron & Stephen Andrews

In New England, local beers rule. No matter what sort of bar or store you go into, it’s a guarantee that the local craft brewers’ wares are going to be represented.

It’s an exhilarating time to be in craft beer, and we are lucky to have one of the best local beer scenes in the country. There are so many breweries, stores, bars, bloggers, and of course, tasters that have built up our craft beer community into the truly special thing it is today - Brian Murphy of the Massachusetts Beverage Alliance

The Massachusetts Beverage Alliance  is a consortium of five distributor houses who joined together to offer state-wide distribution for local and regional craft breweries as well as specialty imports, ciders, and meads.

Each distributor has dedicated craft and specialty representatives that focus exclusively towards the craft category. Each person in all five sales teams are Cicerone Beer Server Certified, and our teams are continuously expanding their knowledge about the ever-changing craft beer culture.

Massachusetts Beverage Alliance offers the best of both worlds for existing and potential breweries. They have one point of contact for centralized ordering and warehousing, P.O.S. coordination, pricing, and big picture strategies.  They also offer in -market expertise and 80+ combined years of relationships from each of the five participating distributors – all of whom have been in business since the end of prohibition.

Massachusetts Beverage Alliance is also a proud member of the World Class Beer Network. World Class Beer is a website and mobile app that is dedicated to proving consumers with the ultimate craft beer experience.They provide “Beer Spy”, “Beer U”, and Monthly Calendars so craft beer enthusiasts can find their favorite beers, learn about beer styles and history, or find out what local events are taking place that they can check out.

Unfortunately, you can’t send someone a beer over the internet (I’ve tried, it just ruined my keyboard…), so getting the word out to the rest of the country can be a challenge. We here at the Massachusetts Beverage Alliance think that by teaming up with bloggers, we can showcase the hard work that our supplier partners have put into their craft, and show the rest of the country how we do it in New England. We are honored to host the Live Beer Blogging event at Burke Distributing and we are looking forward to sharing a beer with you.  We all share a passion for great craft beer and we appreciate the dedication you all have to help spread the word about what we all love to do.  - Brian Murphy of the Massachusetts Beverage Alliance

Live Beer Blogging is one of the signature events at each year’s Beer Bloggers Conference. To learn more about this unique agenda item, check out this post and video from 2012.

The post Massachusetts Beverage Alliance to Host Live Beer Blogging appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.

Two lucky registrants of the European Beer Bloggers Conference were randomly selected to extend their excursion to Traquair a bit, and stay over in the historic property’s Bed & Breakfast.

Our two #EBBC13 lucky bloggers are:

Reuben Gray of The Tale of The Ale

@TaleOfAle

Sam Parker of Lord of the Beers

@LordoftheBeers

Congratulations to the both of you, and we are certain you will enjoy your overnight stay at Traquair!!

As of the publishing of this post, there is just one spot left if you would like to participate in this post-conference day trip. You can read about what’s in store here and follow the contact information to register for the conference and sign up. If there is no room , you will not be charged.

The post Traquair Lucky Bloggers Announced appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.

EBBC13 Attendee List

The EBBC is not a big conference but we are very pleased to have 43 people registered to date plus another eight spaces held for sponsors who have not yet confirmed the person who will attend. That now puts us over 50 registered attendees for EBBC13 to be held July 12-13 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Since we are still 2.5 months away, we hope to substantially increase those numbers.

We are also pleased to have representatives from Ireland, The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Sweden, and Norway in addition to Scotland, Wales, and England within the UK. We even have one blogger coming from Brazil and two from the US, making this a truly international gathering.

Please consider registering for the conference today and note it need not be that expensive to attend. The conference itself is only £95 for Citizen Beer Bloggers, which includes two dinners as well as all the beer you’ll need for the weekend. Our selected hotels are only £75 Thursday for two people (£65 single) and £99 Friday and Saturday for two people (£89 single). If you need a roommate, leave a comment here or use #EBBC13 on Twitter.

To get to Edinburgh from London, it is only £100 if you purchase tickets now on East Coast rail. Those of you flying in should check flights to Edinburgh as well as other UK cities like London.

We understand a total cost of £300 pounds for the weekend isn’t cheap. On the other hand, when else can you get an education-laden weekend focused on your hobby, full of great beer, and with half a hundred fellow bloggers from around the world? We’ll tell you – only at EBBC.

The post EBBC13 Attendee List Now Posted appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.

Fear not, beer blogger! If you’re looking for one place to find all relevant conference updates for the European Beer Bloggers Conference to-date, here they are listed below.

These posts, and the information found under our Europe tab will help you get up to speed on what is going to be a great conference!

Posts:

Garrett Oliver – #EBBC13 Keynote Speaker

Traquair Excursion & Blogger Contest (note – contest ends 4.30.13!)

The Party at Stewart Brewing

From the Department of Awesome – an Edinburgh Pup Crawl

If you haven’t perused the Agenda lately, it’s a good time to check it out as our sessions are pretty much finalized. This is a great opportunity for beer bloggers to come together in addition to industry members who would like networking opportunities with influencers in the social media world as well as learn a bit on social media best practices themselves.

The post Conference Update Digest: European Beer Bloggers Conference appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.

Our search for BBC14 is on, and the first stop is checking in with you, our trusted blogging community, for your recommendations.

We’ve received some pretty neat ideas for hosting in Denver and Atlanta, but we’re not booked yet. So if you want a say, now’s your chance.

Here are a few things we’re looking for in the BBC14 host destination. Essentially, our BBC14 location should:

• Appreciate what the BBC will bring to its local beer scene in terms of online exposure and added credibility
• Have a lot of breweries (obvious, but it had to be said)
• Be easy for people to get to
• Be a place people want to get to
• Have strong local support that can provide, at minimum, two dinners for an estimated 150 people
• Have a conference venue large enough for our group that is eager to host us

If you’d like to see us come to your area and if you think your city would be interested in pulling together a bid for the conference, please send me an email as soon as possible -  heather@zephyradventures.com. You can also call me anytime at 404-936-0692.

We are not just looking for site suggestions. We are looking for an ambassador and advocate for any area – someone who can spearhead the effort and get local organizations involved (with our help, of course). If this person is you, let me know and I’ll send you more information.

We will work with interested parties to create a few excellent bids, have a public vote among the blogging community of possible 2014 locations, and then announce the winner live at BBC13 in Boston.

Looking forward to hearing from you!
Heather

The post 2014 Beer Bloggers Conference – The Location Search Begins! appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.

We are not attorneys, and this post is not legal advice so we encourage every blogger to check out .com Disclosures and consult with an attorney if you have any questions. 

The FTC makes it a point to emphasize that disclosures need to be “clear and conspicuous”, meaning that it’s the publisher’s responsibility to adequately inform readers of the nature of the content.

Below is a summary of a few high-level take aways from the 2013 FTC changes. They apply to all types of sponsored content, including simple product reviews (as a result of free samples).

Some things that no longer work

• A Disclosure page on your blog alone is not adequate
• A disclosure at the bottom of your blog post alone is no longer adequate
• Hyperlinking to a disclosure alone is not adequate

Proximity & Prominence
Disclosures and the endorsement and/or outgoing product link need to be proximate to each other. The FTC states that

“A disclosure is more likely to be effective if consumers view the disclosure and the claim that raises the need for disclosure (often referred to as a “triggering claim”) together on the same screen.”

Keep in mind that this applies to viewing of your content on mobile devises as well. As such, disclosures should be as close to the endorsement and/or outgoing links as possible.

To be safe, the FTC suggests publishers repeat disclosures as needed. We are noticing bloggers disclose the nature of the content at the top of a post, close in proximity to the actual endorsement or sponsored content, and repeated again at the end of the post.

Disclosures also need to be prominent – meaning they need to noticeable. Hyperlinking to a disclosure statement is not adequate; nor is changing the size and/or color of the disclosure to make it less prominent than other content. Again, this applies when viewing content on mobile devices.

In Social Media
If you’re paid to endorse and/or mention products in your social media efforts, then you need to definitely read the full document in order to understand the FTC’s expectations on disclosures in Social Media.

One interesting thing to note, however, is how wording of your social media promotion of your blog posts affects whether or not disclosures in that promotion is required.

For example, if you receive a free sample from a brewery and end up writing a review on your blog, you know that you need to adequately disclose on your post that the product review was a result of a sample. But depending on how you word your tweet of that review affects whether or not that tweet also needs to include a proper disclosure.

A tweet that endorses the beer like

“My favorite #beer of the year is the Bland Ale from the Generic Brewery”

necessitates a disclosure ahead of the tweet so that it reads

“Ad: My favorite #beer of the year is the Bland Ale from the Generic Brewery”

Not disclosing in your endorsement tweet that this is an “ad” would be in conflict with FTC guidelines.

However, a tweet promoting your post and not the product does not require a disclosure.

“A review of Bland Ale from the Generic Brewery”

Whether you accept free samples, partake in affiliate programs and/or monetize your blog in any way, please make sure you read the 2013 FTC guidelines and update your blog with appropriate disclosures so you stay in compliance! Happy blogging!

The post Is Your Beer Blog in Compliance with the FTC? Updated Disclosure Regulations that Affect You. appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.

We want to thank every blogger who entered our Samuel Adams Lucky Blogger promotion and to thank you for your patience in waiting for the results.

Benjamin Moore, Creator and Senior Editor of Active Beer Geek, is our lucky winner!!

Benjamin’s blog is Active Beer Geek. He’s a Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and he orchestrates the weekly #BeerChat Wednesday nights on Twitter. And thanks to our partners and the good folks at the Boston Beer Company, Benjamin is coming to the Beer Bloggers Conference in Boston for free!

We’ve got a tremendous line up of bloggers who’ll be in attendance this year. The participant list is updated on our site and there’s a Twitter list of participants and sponsors for you to one-click follow as well. Our sponsors are coming from across the country to support the event, and we look forward to sharing the exciting details of #BeerSocial with you all soon!

If you want to congratulate Benjamin, leave a comment for him here or send him a tweet to @ActiveBeerGeek

And if you haven’t yet registered for the 2013 Beer Bloggers Conference, then get your rear in gear! It’s going to be a great event!

The post Benjamin Moore – Active Beer Geek – is our Samuel Adams Lucky Blogger! appeared first on Beer Bloggers Conference.