2012 Craft Brewers Conference & World Beer Cup

This past Tuesday I flew out to San Diego, CA for the Craft Brewers Conference and World Beer Cup. It was an honor to attend this amazing event held once a year in a different US city and put on by the Brewers Association. Only every other year is the World Beer Cup held in conjunction with the conference and this was one of those years. More than 4,000 people in the industry attended the official conference May 2-5 which included classes and seminars each day and a kickoff party the likes of which I have never seen at the San Diego Zoo and all culminating in the World Beer Cup.

I arrived early on May 1st to partake in complimentary Brewers Association brewery tours but I will start this post with the real kickoff events at the San Diego Zoo and Keynote address at the Town & Country Hotel this years conference took place at.

Charlie Papazian the legendary father of homebrewing and founder of the Brewers Association started the keynote off with an overview of the craft beer industry and how far we have come. He also welcomed such guests as fellow BA board members Sam Calagione (Dogfish Head), Dick Cantwell (Elysian) and Oregon Senator Peter Defazio before Steve Hindy (Founder/Owner of Brooklyn Brewery) delivered the official Keynote address.

Left to Right: Steve Hindy, Peter DeFazio, Sam Calagione, Dick Cantwell

Steve Hindy who I was not all that familiar with as his Brewmaster Garrett Oliver often is in the spotlight delivered the most entertaining speech. I found it refreshingly relaxed and uncensored as he delivered opinionated jabs towards Republicans and brewers not as concerned with quality as much as others. He shared Mr. Oliver's sense of style yet more understated he prefers a nice hat, he is well versed in politics speaking on both the definition of a craft brewer and current relative tax law on brewers in New York. It was a refreshing close to the kickoff.

A full house for the kickoff party at the San Diego Zoo

The real kickoff to these 5 days may have been the night before though as shuttle buses brought the many thousands of us to the San Diego Zoo for our own private brewfest. This was a party I will not soon forget, one of the most epic ever as tables scattered around the park offered free and all you can drink beer from California's best breweries and a huge catered banquet dinner with above average tex-mex. We came, we saw animals, we drank, we rode sky trams and a fantastic time was had by all.
It was pretty indicative of how the next 4 days would go until it came down to the final big closing event. 

799 breweries from 54 countries and 45 U.S. states entered 3,921 beers in 95 beer style categories into the bi-annual World Beer Cup.

 The opening reception began with an open bar featuring all the left over bottles from judging the competition laid out for everyone to try. This was quite the experience, imagine thousands of bottles of the best beers in the world! As Scott Lawrence co-owner of Breakside Brewery said to me this was the best beer event he had ever been to. And he was referring just to the opening reception alone. He and I managed to find a section populated by the best wild and sour beers and dug in from 08 Marriage Parfait, multiple Geueze's, Lost Abbey Cable Car Kriek and offerings from DiStiehl it was like being in beer heaven. Suddenly the doors opened to the dining room though for the main event.

After a cool intro video presentation the likes of you might see at the Academy Awards we were treated to a great 6 course brewers dinner this year presented by the Chef from San Francisco's Monk's Kettle. They did an amazing job with high quality food and kept it coming at an amazingly quick pace for what must have been around 1,000 people!

Oakshire's Matt Van Wyk and Breakside's Ben Edmunds (Ed. Note: Ben is gesturing towards Matt's Oakshire belt buckle not his "package")

Much of the Portland crew and myself did our best to get together a big table with as many of us as possible and managed to put together a lively bunch that included: Scott Lawrence and Ben Edmunds of Breakside Brewery, Mike Wright, Sean Burke, Josh Grgas of The Commons brewery, Ben and Dan Engler of Occidental Brewing, Vasili Gletsos and Shane Watterson of Laurelwood Brewing, myself representing The New School and Upright Brewing, the Stickmen Brewery crew and "SNOB" Ritch and Kerry "Taplister" Finsand.

In the end our table came out pretty victorious with 4 medals! Here are a few great pictures of the winners from "SNOB" Ritch. (Full list of winners here.)

Scott Larence & Ben Edmunds of Breakside Brewery

Josh Grgas, Mike Wright, Sean Burke of The Commons

Vasili Gletsos and Shane Watterson of Laurelwood Brewing

Sam Calagione with the Breakside crew at the afterparty

This capped a wonderful trip to San Diego but is just the beginning of coverage on The New School. Look for coverage of the Brew Expo featuring some of the unique vendors showing off their wares for the industry, incredible parties, behind-the-scenes brewery tours and interviews with Brooklyn Brewery's Garrett Oliver and the Hallertau Hop Queen!