Tom McCormick isn’t getting much sleep these days. In just a couple of
weeks, the executive director of the California Craft
Brewers Association (CCBA) will welcome some 150
craft breweries, along with home brewers, retailers, wholesalers, beer
enthusiasts and others to celebrate the state where craft beer was born. “It’s an event
that’s never been done in the craft brewing industry anywhere in the country,”
said McCormick.
The two-day California Craft
Beer Summit and Brewers Showcase, which will be held Sept. 11 and 12 at the
Sacramento Convention Center and on Capitol Mall, respectively, will be unlike
any other beer event. The Summit on Friday and Saturday will feature exhibitors
and tap talks on the convention floor, as well as chefs demonstrating how to
pair beer with food and how to cook with beer. The Summit will also include
interactive discussions about the four primary ingredients in beer: hops,
water, barley and yeast. Tasting stations will offer an array of beers,
including some new releases.
Speakers represent
a who’s-who of California craft beer, from pioneers like Fritz Maytag and Mark
Carpenter of Anchor Brewing and Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada to David Walker
and Matt Brynildson of Firestone Walker Brewing, Natalie and Vinnie Cilurzo of
Russian River Brewing, Tony Magee of Lagunitas and Steve Wagner and Mitch
Steele of Stone Brewing, to name a few.
“We intentionally
picked topics that we thought will be of interest to the broad spectrum of people
attending, but also compelling topics such as, what’s the potential for the
industry looking into the future?” said McCormick. “Is there a bubble? Will it
continue to grow? And for the Sacramento brewers panel: What can we expect in
Sacramento? How many new breweries can open up?”
McCormick added:
“We’re offering demos, educational seminars and exhibits specific to each of
the individual groups attending the event. But we feel we all have something to
learn from each other. For example, the brewers are really excited that we’re
going to have three or four home brewing demos going on. Home-brewing clubs are
bringing the latest and greatest equipment in home brewing. The brewers are
excited to see what the home brewers are up to. Likewise, vendors for the
professional brewery are exhibiting equipment, and the home brewers are excited
about that. The retailers have a lot to learn from the consumers and the
wholesalers have a lot to learn from the retailers.”
The Craft Beer
Summit will shine a light on the unusual synergy among consumers, home brewers
and professional breweries. “It’s a unique industry in that the consumer is
really connected with the manufacturer, in this case the craft brewery. You
don’t see that in many consumer products,” McCormick said. “The roots of craft
brewing are absolutely in home brewing. So many of the current craft brewers
come from a home brewing background originally.”
It’s a sure bet
that some of the consumers attending the Sacramento event will become home
brewers and some of the home brewers will open their own breweries. It’s
already happening. “There are hundreds of what we call ‘breweries in planning’
on our database list. A lot of consumers are thinking about it and a lot of the
people who are coming to this event are actively in the process of starting a
brewery,” McCormick said.
Brewers Showcase
The beer drinking
will commence in earnest on Saturday afternoon after the Summit, a few blocks
away on Capitol Mall. The Brewers Showcase will offer a
unique opportunity to sample beers from all over the state side-by-side,
especially beers from Southern California that usually don’t make it outside
their local markets. “That was a big part of our goal, and it wasn’t easy,”
McCormick said. “A lot of the (Southern California) breweries that will be at
the Brewers Showcase would not typically go to a beer festival in Sacramento or
even Northern California because they’re so small and a lot of them are already
selling as much beer as they can make anyway.”
To make it easier
for SoCal breweries to bring their beers to Sacramento, the CCBA set up a
logistical system of drop-off points in San Diego and Los Angeles where the
breweries can drop off their beers and equipment. “It’s great, because some of
these tiny breweries are able to just drop their beer off and then hop on a
plane or drive their car up rather than their van full of beer. Then we’re
taking all of their empty kegs and jockey boxes and whatever they want to put
in there and are shipping it back to them,” McCormick said.
At the Brewers
Showcase, each of the 150 breweries will bring two kegs and as many bottles as
they want. One of the requirements for the event is that someone from each of
the breweries will be pouring at their booth. “We’ve told the breweries that
this event is for them, so bring some special beers,” said McCormick. “We
anticipate some very special beers and we’re starting to see some specific
products as the breweries fill out their sheets. There are definitely going to
be some unique beers poured that breweries are bringing out of the aging rooms
and cellars because it is a special event.”
The Craft Beer
Summit and Brewers Showcase is an ambitious maiden voyage for an organization
known mostly for its advocacy for craft beer legislation, such as lobbying the
state legislature to allow craft beer to be poured at farmer’s markets. “Although we’ve
done a lot of events over the years, the association has never done a consumer
event before,” said McCormick, whose background is in the beer industry and not
events. “We’re all entrepreneurs. You have to be a pretty crazy entrepreneur to
get into this business. You don’t get into this business for the money. You get
into it because you love it and you’re passionate and creative. We wanted to do
something different, and I think we are.”
Happily, this
year’s Summit and Showcase won’t be a one-off. “We have a five-year strategic
plan, and this event signals that the association wants to further promote
craft beer both as a product and as an industry,” McCormick said.
“Our vision is for
this to be an annual event and ultimately not just a regional event. Our vision
is that this will be a showcase event for the craft brewing industry that
people from all over the country come to California to see and do, similar to
the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.”
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discount: CAcraftbeer10
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