Our Thirst for Education. NCCBC 2019 is Still Sinking In…
Founders Dave and Allison Hamme hanging out in the Brew House at Wise Man Brewing at the NC CBC Welcome Party
Director of Brewing Operations and Head Brewer, David Gonzalez and Co-Founder Allison Hamme at NC CBC sessions, soaking it all in.
Over the past few months, the Lost Worlds crew has traveled to a variety of events to continue our beer industry education. Our brewing team has attended a couple of very intense technical brewing conferences (yes, even DG, a long-time brewer, still has a thirst for knowledge, and beer too, but that’s another story…). To cap off the year, it all culminated with the North Carolina Craft Brewers Conference, of which we are proud members. We brought a team of four people and took a divide and conquer approach in order to hit as many learning sessions as we could over the course of three days. The conference included topics on technical brewing, marketing best practices, sales and distribution, legal matters, and sustainability to name just a few. There’s also a great trade show to meet with vendors and peruse products, an awards dinner, beer movie presentations, brewery visits, networking parties, and oh yeah, beer! Simply put, our beer brains were on overload. It wasn’t until we gathered as a team to debrief that it began to sink in – the Craft Brewer’s Guild of North Carolina packed so much industry knowledge into each day that we couldn’t possible cover it all – oh, but we did!
As we shared our notes with each other, here’s the top takeaways and a few observations from the mouths of a small brewery start-up in Cornelius, NC:
There are a lot of newcomers to the craft brewery scene. In one session of over 100 breweries they asked for a show of hands for breweries that were 5 years older or more. A small number of hands shot up. The less than 5-year, and a larger number of hands went up. Then they asked, how many are building and planning to open in 2020? This question prompted the majority of the participants in the room to raise their hands. Well, we weren’t alone. This industry is still exploding with growth and we are drinking up the information from established brewers and industry experts who are happy to share their knowledge and welcome a lot of new breweries into the fold. You know what they say, a rising tide raises all ships. Cheers to all the newbies on this same voyage!
Building you brand is critical to survival. Brewing great beer is simply not enough (side note: we can’t wait for you taste ours). It takes time to build a tribe that connects to you brand. We heard from many marketing experts and some brewers that have been in business for a while, that it’s a daily grind to differentiate yourselves from other breweries. There are tips and tools and we noted them all. They also confirmed that social media marketing and content creation is still king.
Beer Laws are lengthy. No doubt about the fact that ABC and TTB run a tight ship. The session about music law was perhaps the scariest.
The brewing industry always combines learning with keeping a cold one in your hand. Beer sponsors poured tastes into our tin cups (conference swag from Ekos) between every session. It makes learning both tasty and fun.
The trade show taught us to take along an extra suitcase next time. We learned a lot about new and established vendors and walked away with a lot of SWAG.
Charlie Papazian, author of The Complete Joy of Home brewing and the man who launched the home brewing movement, gave a keynote that we will all remember. He’s a legend and we bow down to him!
Lastly, networking is beyond valuable. From the Welcome Reception to the Happy Hours and After Parties, each event was a forum to meet other industry folks and talk informally about everything from POS systems to seasonal beers. We met so many new faces – and they all promised to come to our soft opening in 2020 to cheer us on.