Craft Brewers Conference Day 2

What an amazing day. We started out with a great opening ceremony which featured Eric Wallace from Left Hand and Ken Allen from Anderson Valley both receiving major awards. After that Greg Koch from Stone gave the keynote address. It was interactive, it was funny...and I will never be able to look at Adam Avery and Vinnie Cirluzo the same way. Greg talked about Being Remarkable and focused on ethics and collaboration along with some other critical ideas. For our opening toast beer we shared a bottle of Isabelle Proximus which makes an incredible breakfast beer. After a full year in the bottle, its getting pretty good.

Next up was the Exposition Hall...plenty of good beer, a lot of it from Allagash including some amazing brett beers. Also had the Black Folie which is a blend of New Belgium La Folie and Redstone Black Raspberry Mead. Afterwards we sat in on some really informative educational sessions (yes, we have to work here...which reminds me, we had a great supplier meeting yesterday and we may have some really exciting news to announce in a couple of months).

Finally, it was time to relax. We had several events scheduled, including a clam bake at Boston Beer Company, a Shmaltz night at Roadhouse and Global Imports at Brasserie Jo. The Global event was awesome. They had brewers from Bavik and de Halve Maan there and we enjoyed Wittekerke, Gulden Draak, Piraat and Bruges Zot in the proper glassware.

Somewhere along the line, I got an email from Natalie Cirluzo who was blogging from the event. I read her recent post and then immediately saw her...it was kind of weird. Any way, Russian River remains a top brewery, and at the top of our wish list. Nothing to report on that front, but I did my semi-annual grovelling, once again with nothing definite. I continue to try...mostly for the beer drinking people of Arizona, which includes me, so it is a little selfish.

I'm sitting here drinking an Anchor Steam while I type this. Anchor Steam was my first craft beer and this conference always makes me nostalgic. I'll tell you more about Anchor Steam some other time. This is always a great event and we have an opportunity to develop close relationships with our suppliers, as well as other folks in the industry. At the end of the week, those relationships are what matter...that and selling more beer.

Thanks for continuing to follow...more to come tomorrow.