Hops the Highlight of Day 1 of Beer Bloggers Conference

August 20th, 2011 · From the Organizers

The first day of the Beer Bloggers Conference started extremely well with a talk by Julia Herz of the Brewers Association and CraftBeer.com. Julia spoke last year as well and her talk highlights the current state of craft beer in the United States. The audience loved her admission that she is a closet “cross drinker”, which is interesting because it shows craft beer does not necessarily see it as competing with wine and spirits. Instead, there is a time and place for every drink.

We then moved into our first keynote speech, actually a duo – longtime beer legend Fred Eckhardt along with Oregonian columnist and blogger John Foyston. Everyone loved 85-year old Fred and his humorous approach to life and beer. John played the pro, deftly keeping the conversation moving, asking questions, and providing interesting quotes from Fred’s life.

We then had a presentation called “How to Brew on Your Own Stovetop (While Blogging on Your Laptop)” by Erica Shea and Stephen Valand, co-founders and owners of the Brooklyn Brew Shop and co-authors of the forthcoming The Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Beer Making Book. Stephen and Erica had a great New York-style in their presentation and won over the audience with humor and a great presentation.

Then it was off to a hop farm south of Portland. The bus ride was long, thanks to an especially arduous Friday afternoon commute, but we were entertained on the ride by a number of local Oregon brewers who poured some of their more unusual beers. The hop processing facility was in full swing and was the first time many of us had ever seen one in action, or at all. The Oregon Brewers Guild put out a dinner spread on the lawn and the whole experience was well worth the trip.

Finally, it was the Night of Many Bottles. We had so many beers brought by attendees, my personal strategy was to wander the room and ask bloggers which beers they would recommend I try. I tasted a pumpkin beer, a cherry homebrew collaboration, a whiskey-barrel aged beer, and a number of other excellent offerings.

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Portland Brew Pub Crawl

August 19th, 2011 · From the Organizers

The conference unofficially started last night with an optional Thursday Portland Brewpub Crawl. Bloggers Bill Night from It’s Pub Night and Charles Culp from An Ear For a Beer did a fantastic job setting it up and chaperoning us. By our count, we had 46 attendees.

We started by visiting Widmer’s pilot brewery at the Rose Garden, home of the Portland Trailblazers. We tried a number of beers, including an interesting berry beer, and heard from the brewer. The Widmer folks were nice enough to open up just for our group.

We then traveled by Light Trail to the Deschutes Street Fare. Deschutes had closed off one block in front of their Portland brewpub and had set up with beer, local food vendors, and bands. It was a fantastic street party but even better was the treatment they showed us. Handing out 46 Press passes, they herded us past the $10 ticket station at no charge. Thanks, Deschutes!

We then went on to the Lucky Labrador, which has a large German-style beer hall attached to the brewery. Most folks couldn’t resist ordering pizza (delicious) along with a beer and those who were interested went on a tour of the facility with the brewer.

We rounded out the evening by traveling via Street Car to the Old Lompoc brewery. The brew pub is a funky place with a number of side rooms. We tried a final beer before finishing out the evening.

The best thing about evenings like this at a Beer Bloggers Conference is that it gives those of participating the chance to meet each other, before the actual conference even begins. Thanks to Bill, Charles, and our four participating Portland breweries!

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Beer Bloggers Conference Update

August 3rd, 2011 · From the Organizers

Quick updates about the upcoming conference in Portland:

  • We are at 83 people registered!
  • The Doubletree hotel has extended its discounted rate of $134 to August 5th for late registrants. Please reserve your room online now to get this rate.
  • The Night of Many Beers is back! This was the highest rate event of the conference in Boulder. We’ll post exclusively about this next week.
  • We have booked Karl Ockert from Master Brewers Association of the Americas for a talk on The Beer Steward Program. Here is the summary: Beer is often described in terms of process and style.  Separating the two main families of beer into Lagers and Ales makes sense to brewers who formulate recipes and make the beer but means very little to the consumers who drink them.  Doppel Bock has more flavors in common to a Brown ale than to its Pilsner cousin.  In an effort to simplify flavor descriptions for all beer styles, whether they are Lagers or Ales, the Beer Steward Program of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas looks past the traditional family beer tree so that we can place any particular beer into one of four flavor-driven groups:  Malt-Driven, Hop-Driven, Fermentation-Driven, and Flavored Beers   The flavor group scenario makes more sense to the beer drinker, who is looking for a particular flavor and does not care about its production process, and is easier for the beer professional to describe and explain.
  • We have six of the eight spots filled for the 15-minute blogger presentations on Sunday morning of the conference. This is your chance to talk about something of interest to you in the beer blogging world. Let us know if you’d like to speak! Here is the list so far:

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The Love of Beer

July 27th, 2011 · From the Organizers

We have teamed with organizers of the first ever PDX Beer Week for our Saturday evening party. PDX Beer Week is proud to to present the World Premiere of Alison Grayson’s documentary on women in the craft beer industry, The Love of Beer.

The Love of Beer is a documentary devoted to the stories and passion of the women at the forefront of the Pacific Northwest beer community. The beer industry is exploding; as of 2010, there are 1,759 breweries operating within the United States–1,716 of these are craft breweries. While the industry is expanding rapidly, growing 11% by volume in 2010, women within the industry are a vast minority. Out of the approximately 50,000 craft beer workers, only 598 currently belong to the Pink Boots Society, an organization for women in the industry.

Things weren’t always this way. Brewing used to be a household chore that fell upon women. Both Egyptian and Sumerian cultures have goddesses of beer, and in in the middle ages, fewer than 8% of brewers were male. It wasn’t until the industrial revolution that brewing shifted from a women’s small enterprise to the domain of (mostly male) factory workers. Beer and brewing gained a “men’s club” stereotype and, further enforced by marketing and popular media, the industry has remained a heavily male-dominated field.

However, in the Pacific NW, women are fighting their way towards being some of the most influential people in the brewing industry. From the farm to the consumer, Pacific NW women are setting new standards for brewing and changing the way the nation looks at women and beer.

See the Love of Beer trailer online.

The film will be shown at 9:00 PM at the world-renowned McMenamins Bagdad Theater. Thanks to sponsors Deschutes and Bend Brewing, the theater will be offering $3 pint specials from these fine Bend-based breweries all evening. This will be a perfect cap to our dinner at Bridgeport BrewPub.

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Feedback from the European Beer Bloggers Conference

July 21st, 2011 · From the Organizers

After we run a conference, we solicit feedback in a number of ways. We check out blog posts from attendees. We ask attendees to fill out a formal online survey. We email sponsors and speakers to get their views. All this makes the next year’s conference that much better.

We at Zephyr Adventures use a standard five-point scale for all of our conferences (and tours) that is weighted to be difficult – three equals “good”, four equals “very good”, and five equals “outstanding”. The first-ever European Beer Bloggers Conference scored the highest participant rating of any of our conferences -beer, food, wine, or fitness & health – with a 4.59 rating. 72% of respondents rated the conference Outstanding.

Here are just two comments from participants:

  • “I had high expectations after reading the line-up. My expectations were completely overwhelmed and the whole weekend was far better than I imagined possible.”
  • “Sceptical at first but excellently organised, good content, good bunch of folks, really brought people together. Came away feeling inspired.”

From a sponsor’s perspective, make sure to read this summary from Bad Attitude Brewery in Switzerland. Specifically, he wrote the following about the Live Beer Blogging:

“The meeting ends and now it’s time for my speed dating (Live Blogging) event. Five minutes to explain my beer, my brewery, my philosophy. And in English, too!! What will I say? All of a sudden I don’t feel so confident – I feel like an idiot. What if I brought the wrong beer? Was I wrong in bringing a UK-inspired porter (our TwoPenny) to an English beer event? A beer that has been brewed intentionally out of style, too! What if they hate it?

Then I decide to just go with the flow and speak about me, about Switzerland, Italy, Bad Attitude and our philosophy. And my difficulties with the language sound fitting, in a way – our TwoPenny is just as out of style as my weird way of speaking English. I interpret a style in my own personal way as a manner of expressing something about myself. Brewing a Porter in perfect style would only result in mimicking someone else’s work: in brewing out of style I want to claim my own difference and distinctiveness.
The result is a total success. Everyone is in love with our TwoPenny. Speed dating was tough but very fun and rewarding. And hearing an English man praising your own beer as the best of the lot, even if it’s out of style, even if you described it in a lousy English, well – it’s priceless. I am thrilled.”

To give you a better idea of the conference, we’ll post this unofficial summary video of Day 2 of the European Beer Bloggers Conference, created by Nathan at Mr. Drink ‘n’ Eat. This is a high-quality production that perfectly captures the mood of the conference. If you are in North America and have not yet signed up for the August 19-21 conference in Portland, don’t miss it!

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Blogging About (and Changing) Beer Laws

July 18th, 2011 · From the Organizers

Have you heard of Free the Hops, which successfully lobbied to change an Alabama law that restricted breweries from selling to the public via brew pubs? How about Raise Your Pints, an organization working to revamp restrictive beer laws in Mississippi?

Did you know several Texas bloggers recently created a new organization called Open the Taps hopes to change Texas laws to make them more friendly to craft brewers? This panel will discuss how you as a blogger can write about and even change your state’s restrictive beer laws. We have three very knowledgeable panelists including:

Cathy Clark Rascoe (aka @cathywonderful on Twitter) is an attorney in Texas who writes for her personal blog, Brewtiful.  She is also the founder of Houston Beer Week, Dallas Beer Week, the Monsters Of Beer Charity Festival and the Dallas Beer Festival.  Rascoe recently won a 2011 Houston Press Web Award for her blog post distilling craft beer-related bills that were then pending in the Texas State Legislature.  She is an avid supporter of craft beer in Texas and has recently co-founded a grassroots organization in Texas called Open The Taps dedicated to changing the antiquated and often bizarre beer laws in Texas.  Her favorite beer is Stout.

Michelle Minton is an analyst at The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market defending think tank in Washington, D.C. At CEI Minton sparks intelligent public debate in popular media and among activists about subjects that are often taboo or overlooked. She defends the right of those involved in what she calls, “The Sindustry”, by providing intellectual support for their right to engage in consensual behavior. In addition to her public policy work on alcohol-related issues, Minton is an avid fan of craft beer. Her writing on craft brew and twitter feed (where she goes by the name “Biergirl”) have gained increasing recognition and have become a respected source for industry news and opinion. Her favorite style of beer is Saison.

Craig Hendry is the Co-founder and Vice-President of Operations & Communications at Raise Your Pints, a non-profit, grassroots organization working since 2007 to reform Mississippi’s beer laws (all beer brewed and sold is capped at 6.25 ABV and homebrewing is illegal). Co-founder of Mississippi Craft Beer Week and author of the 2010 and 2011 “Mississippi Craft Beer Week” Proclamations signed by Governor Haley Barbour.  Hendry writes for his personal blog Mississippi Brew Blog (2007) and can be found @craighendry on Twitter.  He has also been a homebrewer for 10 years.  His favorite beer is, well, whatever he’s brewed last.

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Portland Pub Crawl at BBC11

July 7th, 2011 · From the Organizers

We the conference organizers are excited to work with local Portland bloggers who will organize and lead a pub crawl (really a brewery crawl) on Thursday evening, August 18, before the conference. One thing we know from past experience is that blogger conferences can be MUCH better if you go into them having met a number of bloggers the night before. Below is a writeup provided by two of these bloggers, Bill Night from It’s Pub Night and Charles Culp from An Ear For a Beer.

Thursday Pub Crawl

The Portland Beer Bloggers would like to welcome the attendees of the 2011 Beer Bloggers Conference to our fair city.  We are very proud of our beer scene, and can think of no better way to share it with you than with a pub crawl the night before the conference, highlighting four breweries that show what makes Portland Portland.  The crawl — held Thursday night before the BBC begins — will be led by local bloggers, and you will get the chance to meet several of us along the way.  Visit http://PDX.Be/erBlogPubCrawl to see a map of the whole pub crawl, and read on for descriptions of the stops.

Upright Brewing, opened in 2009 by brewer/owner Alex Ganum, quickly earned a reputation as one of the most exciting and innovative breweries in Portland with its lineup of open-fermented Franco-Belgian farmhouse ales.  As if that wasn’t enough, Upright also produces exceptional lagers and an impressive range of creative barrel-conditioned beers.  A tasting at Upright is like a visit to your coolest beer friend’s basement hideout, and this private event for the BBC is a great way to kick off the crawl.

Our next stop is the Deschutes Brewery Portland Public House in Northwest Portland, where as luck would have it the Deschutes Street Fare — celebrating Deschutes’ 23rd anniversary — will be taking place.  In addition to the pub’s usual offerings of Deschutes classics and experimental batches brewed right here in Portland, the Street Fare will feature an assortment of Portland’s famous food carts.

Next we will visit the Northwest Portland outpost of a Portland brewing institution — the Lucky Labrador.  Beloved for the laid-back atmosphere of its four pubs — including plenty of dog-friendly outdoor seating — the Lucky Lab serves a variety of ales and lagers in honest 20-ounce pint glasses.  You haven’t been to Portland if you haven’t been to the Lucky Lab.

Just a short walk down Raleigh Street takes us to the New Old Lompoc which, despite the “New” in its name, is the original location of Portland’s Lompoc Brewing empire, founded in the year 2000.  Lompoc’s solid year-round lineup is usually augmented with one or two seasonal ales, as well as a cask-conditioned selection and a nitro tap.

After our visit to the New Old Lompoc, we’ll take the Portland Streetcar back to Deschutes, which is just a short walk from the light rail line back to the Doubletree Hotel.  If you’re not ready to head back to your room, feel free to hang out a while longer at Deschutes, take a short walk to the Rogue or Bridgeport pubs nearby, or visit Bailey’s Taproom, downtown Portland’s finest beer bar.  Just remember to save some of your strength for the rest of the Beer Bloggers Conference.  Welcome to Portland!

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BBC Portland: Three Saturday Panels Announced

July 1st, 2011 · From the Organizers

We are pleased to announce three panels to be held on Saturday, August 20 during the Beer Bloggers Conference in Portland. The panelists are both local and national and all have a wealth of experience to share. The first two panels are designed to encourage citizen bloggers to work more with the beer industry while the second has a focus on Portland itself. Details are below.

The agenda is still being set and further sessions will be announced soon. If you have not yet registered for the conference, please do so today!

Panel: Learning From Industry Bloggers: The focus of the Beer Bloggers Conference (and, indeed, the beer blogging community in general) is on what we call “citizen bloggers”, those not associated with a brewery or other business. However, at the same time there are hundreds of “industry bloggers” writing about or simply connected to a specific business. This panel will talk about how industry bloggers use their blogs to promote their specific business, gain customers, and enhance their own communities, all with an idea towards learning things we Citizen Bloggers might be able to apply. We will hear from Ryan Ross from Karl Strauss, Michael Busman from New Belgium, and Matt Van Wyk from Oakshire Brewing in Eugene, Oregon.

Panel: Working With Your Local Brewery: If you ever blog about your local breweries and their beers, it makes sense to have a good relationship with them. This might include getting on their PR list, being invited to special beer dinners, and being told first about new brews in production. In fact, this method of “blogging local” can be a great way to establish a niche and community for your blog. We’ll hear from four people who are heavily involved in brewery-blogger relations: Bill Manly, Communications Director from Sierra Nevada; Ashely Routson, who parlayed her blog Drink With the Wench into a job in the beer industry; brewer Ben Edmunds from Breakside Brewery in Portland; and Ben Love, head brewer at Hopworks Urban Brewery in Portland and President of the Oregon Brewers Guild.

Panel: Lessons From Portland as a Beer (and Beer Blogging) City: Portland is considered one of the greatest beer cities in the United States and, indeed, in the world. According to the Oregon Brewers Guild, there are 40 breweries operating in Portland, more than any other city in the world. And according to the Complete List of Beer Blogs on this site, there are at least 22 citizen beer blogs we know about in the Portland area. What makes Portland such a great beer (and beer blogging) city and how can you improve the situation where you live? We’ll hear from local bloggers Jeff Alworth from Beervana, Lisa Morrison from Beer Goddess, and Ezra Johnson-Greenough from The New School Brew Blog.

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Fred Eckhardt and John Foyston to Speak at Beer Bloggers Conference

June 23rd, 2011 · From the Organizers

Beer writing legends Fred Eckhardt and John Foyston are scheduled to speak in duo-keynote speech at the 2011 Beer Bloggers Conference in Portland. Blogger Jay Wilson will wrap up the conference with a talk on “Standing Out From the Crowd”.

As described in Ken Wells’ Travels With Barley, “Fred is [an eighty-five] year old former Marine Buddhist . . . . He wrote a book on how to homebrew lagers in 1969, ten years before homebrewing was relegalized. His 1989 book, The Essentials of Beer Style, has become a kind of Rosetta Stone for homebrewers and those who judge homebrew competitions.”

Fred will be joined on stage by John Foyston, beer columnist and blogger for the Portland Oregonian. According to his biography, John was in a newspaper “redesign meeting in the mid-1990s where editors earnestly pondered what the entertainment section needed to be more Portland-centric. ‘We need to write about craft beers,’ Foyston said. The rest of the room, being wine drinkers and worse, essentially said, ‘OK — you do it’.” The led to The Beer Here.

Fred and John will be holding a sort of “fireside chat” without the fire, expounding on all things beer, Portland, and writing.

In addition, we are pleased to have beer blogger Jay Wilson of brewvana who recently received a ton of mainstream press for his creative experiment in which he lived on beer and water alone for 46 days, replicating the fasts of ancient monks. You can see details of the experiment on his other blog, Diary of a Part-Time Monk.

In addition to blogging, Jay is an award-winning homebrewer, BJCP Certified judge, full-time dad and writer, and semi-professional beer drinker. He recently secured a publisher and the Diary of a Part-time Monk book is scheduled for publication in late October.

Jay will be speaking about his fast, the resulting media coverage, and how you, too, can stand out from the beer blogging crowd.

We will be announcing the final content for the conference soon!

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European and North American Beer Blogging Compared

June 2nd, 2011 · From the Organizers

Blogging in general and beer blogging in specific is much bigger in North American than in the rest of the world. Our current Complete List of Beer Blogs shows 684 “citizen” beer blogs in North America as compared to 315 in the rest of the world. See today’s Press Release on “999 Bloggers of Beer on the Web“. (Update: We just hit 1000 and are still growing. Congrats to homebrewer and blogger Manic Organik for being blog 1000.)

The largest concentration of beer bloggers outside North America is in the UK, which has 126, a reasonable number given the different population sizes. In addition, there are at least 57 non-blogger beer writers in the UK, likely more than in North America.

Beer blogging is also more advanced in North America. We found fewer laptops being used, fewer people on Twitter, and fewer who knew the meaning of SEO (search engine optimization) at the European Beer Bloggers Conference just completed. It also appeared there is less ongoing interaction between bloggers and breweries and fewer attempts by European bloggers to create their own “brand” they can use to go beyond blogging, two trends important in North America. But I found the European bloggers to be quite professional, highly dedicated, and interested in learning. They will catch up very fast.

(Two side notes. 1) We have also found from running the Wine Bloggers Conference and International Food Bloggers Conference that wine bloggers and food bloggers tend to be more along that technical curve than beer bloggers, when looking at North America. 2) All bloggers need to decide why they do what they do and if they are not interested in more hits, better SEO, better connections with breweries, etc, than they need not be concerned with all of this.)

Also interesting is there is more interaction among bloggers in different US states than there is between beer bloggers in various European countries. European bloggers are not following blogs – even in their own language – outside their own country, although there does seem to be good cross-fertilization between the UK and the US. Of course, the language barrier does keep many bloggers from reading other blogs but Google Translate is a pretty good tool and I would not hesitate to leave a comment in English on a blog post you have translated and read in another language.

All this actually makes our conference in Europe that much more exciting. European beer blogging is new, it is growing, and it has tremendous upside. In fact, were I to characterize European beer blogging in one word it would be potential. European beer bloggers have the potential to increase their readers (via better websites and better SEO), to have a great influence on breweries (through more interaction), and ultimately to be able to change the entire producing and consuming beer scene in Europe (by coming together as a more cohesive community).

It is the beer scene in Europe that makes beer blogging there especially rewarding. I remember back in the 1980s how, for the most part, European beer seemed to be much ahead of beer in North America. The craft brewing revolution changed all that and now we in the US have an amazing variety of good, flavorful beers available most everywhere. The large breweries are paying attention and are starting to produce their own craft beers or to buy into existing craft breweries, which only supports the movement.

From my week in London interacting with bloggers and breweries, I would say this same revolution is just beginning in Europe. A brewery like BrewDog has a fantastic PR approach but, ultimately, their success is due to brewing good quality, flavorful, bottled beers. Other breweries are just starting to do the same and I predict 40 BrewDog-like success stories to come out of Europe in the next eight years. And large breweries are paying closer attention sooner in Europe, since they have the US model to follow and know what is coming.

It is that attention that made the European Beer Bloggers Conference the most fantastic conference I have organized, over three years of running blogger conferences. The sponsors were amazingly supportive of the conference. They fully recognize bloggers are key “influencers” who will have an effect in reaching out to the public. They want to help their local beer bloggers grow and thrive. Even mega brewers like MolsonCoors are avid supporters of the concept of beer blogging and did not try to impose their will on the conference but, instead, were happy to provide their best beers, interact, and let the bloggers make their own decision.

The level of brewery support, large and small, went well beyond any support we received from the North American BBC this past November, I think in part because many craft breweries in the US are simply selling their beer as fast as they can produce it and don’t need another marketing outlet. On the other hand, North American breweries seem to be better at putting bloggers on their press list, inviting them to dinners, and telling them about special beer releases. Both geographies could learn – European breweries could reach out more to bloggers on a regular basis and North American breweries could realize that Citizen Beer Bloggers, who spend their own time and money doing what they do, could use support to make sure the beer blogging community thrives.

In short, it is exciting on both sides of the pond and I would love to learn more about beer blogging in Australia/New Zealand, Asia, South America, or Latin America!

This is just my opinion. What do you think?

Allan Wright
Beer Bloggers Conference Organizer

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