Information Overload.
There's no other way to describe the last 13 hours. Early this morning
we got up to blue skies and sunshine. A nice change of pace! We had
the supreme pleasure of listening to Charlie Papazian deliver his
opening remarks. Cool guy. Of course it was my writing to him on
Facebook that actually convinced me to come. Funny aside, I bumped
into him tonight, and introduced myself, and he said "OH, you're THAT
guy!"
After Charlie we had some pretty hard stats delivered from Paul Gatza
on the State of the Industry. Craft Brew sales are up, a good thing
for a potential start-up like ours. It seems that local, flavourful,
quality brews are capturing the public's imagination.
The keynote address was delivered by Greg Koch the guy from Stone
Brewing. He opened with an incredibly moving video, essentially a
collage type message from 35 different micro-brewery personalities. It
was a stunning piece of work, a great message, I shall have to hunt it
down and see if it is on YouTube somewhere. The inspiring message was
to create something beyond the everyday, more than a mere commodity: a
product with authentic character… so go small, be something local,
and of the highest quality. An ultra-premium product. Today was so
much market analysis, so many results from Craft Brewer's market
surveys. Data suggests the higher the price, the greater the volume in
sales growth. In 2008, Seasonals surpassed Pale Ale!
I ran the gauntlet of the trade show, trying to absorb the dozens and
dozens of suppliers of brew systems, grains, yeasts, hops, labels,
bottles, signage…and at each turn beers were being poured to show off
this new smoke malt, this special yeast, this liquid concentrate, the
new hop variety. You sample an awful lot of beer, trying to sort out
the particular nuances of aroma, body, malt flavour… and somehow never
get inebriated! The seminars start, and you're attending with a glass
of Arrogant Bastard in hand. You run out on the break and grab a
bottle of Victory Torpedo. The seminars have topics ranging from
sourcing capital, to cleaning the stainless, writing the business
plan, or Ray Daniels discussing how to determine brewhouse size. By
mid-afternoon, I was seriously starting to wonder how much more
information my brain could absorb!
So far, it's been an amazing conference. We're meeting with a lot of
warmth, support, and encouragement from brewing industry people from
all over the world. Tonight's reception was at the Samuel Adams Boston
Brewery. We not only got to sample many experimental beers from one of
America's finest craft brewers, but were chatting and hanging with
the leaders of the craft brew movement. Even the bus ride home, I sat
with Fritz who was brought here from Germany to lecture at the Master
Brewers Yeast Symposium on Monday. You rarely find that level of
travel companion on the TTC!
