3rd Annual DeLand Craft Beer Festival - Part 2 (Breakout Sessions)

Ernest Shackleton said "I believe it is in man's nature to explore."  Being pre-disposed to wanting to visit Antarctica yes, it is easy for him to say that.  Of course, he is not just talking about the desire to move your body from one geographic region to another.  Exploration is about so much more than just geography, and the massive trends we have seen over the past many years support this.  We not only want to see more of the universe around us, we also want to explore knowledge, psychology, and emotions.  It stands to reason really, that craft beer would take off.  This is not a phenomena, it was an inevitability.

For many years, record companies decided what we would listen to.  While thousands of bands were doing club tours all over the world, we were handed a small ring of bands who were given record contracts as if drawn out of a hat and that was what we had to choose from.  Enter Napster and here we are.  For years we survived on the same meat and potatoes diet that were taught to us by our parents who were taught by their parents.  Enter World Wars, young men and women travelling abroad, television giving us cooking shows, and here we go trying all types of exotic foods we never would have tried.  For many years, the massive breweries used their lawyers and advertising dollars to convince us that beer was dull and had to be drank excessively cold.  Enter easier travel, the internet, and here we are with a craft beer revolution.  The fact is, we as humans want more than what we are given.  We have a natural inclination to desire information about what we are experiencing.  We are curious beasts.

It is that theory that caused us to make one of the most important decisions regarding this festival that I feel represents the next level in what we are trying to accomplish - the breakout session.  Simply put, we try to get people to leave a beer festival to walk into a room where they will attend a 30 minute class.  Why not?  Everyone wants to leave a beer festival to take a class, right?  The theory is that the people who attend our festival will because they are naturally curious beasts who want to know a little more about what they are consuming.  I'm not saying that we invented this idea.  In fact, it has been done at the Great American Beer Festival for years and I was able to attend some great sessions at the Savor festival in Washington D.C.  The fact is that these are two of the best festivals in the country and I want to be like them.  So, if you want to throw a fastball like Nolan Ryan - learn from Nolan Ryan.

We hold our breakout sessions across the street from the festival in a room that belongs to the legendary Cafe da Vinci.  Lucky we are that they allow us to use this room, it is the perfect setting for a class, equipped with stage and seating for a good 50 people.  Each session lasts about 30 minutes and each speaker is given a topic which he or she has personal expertise in.  This year we had some great speakers:

Me and Tom Moench

Tom Moench - Owner (Unique Beers / Orange Blossom Pilsner) - Tom spoke on the topic of Bottles versus Cans.  Tom's own brand is moving to cans and this being a hot and terribly misunderstood topic right now, we felt it would be a perfect fit.  We were able to do a blind tasting of three different beers that were available in both bottles and cans and had the crowd discuss which they thought were superior.  As could be expected, the overwhelming favor was given to the canned products.  Of course, the subtleties were all different across the brands, but when asked which they prefer, the majority of the crowd chose the canned product.

Brian Hansen - Sales (Craft Brewers Alliance) - Brian spoke about the benefits of ageing on certain types of beers.  We had a sampling of the 2011 Barrel Aged Brrrrbon from Widmer Brothers http://widmerbrothers.com/beer/#barrel-aged-brrrbon-11 and were lucky enough to have them donate a case of 4 year old RedHook Double Black Stout http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18134/55 .  Of course, we were fortunate to have both of these brews at the event, but the Double Black was a perfect example of the subtle changes that a beer that sits for a number of years can accomplish.

Jeff Brown from Boulder

Jeff Brown - Owner (Boulder Brewing) - One of the true gentlemen of the business, we were lucky enough to have Jeff attend our festival for the second year in a row.  Jeff's topic was facing the challenges of growing into new markets.  Being that Boulder is making a huge move into the east coast, it was a perfect time to attack this topic.  Additionally, we were lucky enough to have samples of the 2009 Killer Penguin Barleywine http://www.boulderbeer.com/ and the fresh Mojo Risin Double IPA that was recently released.

John Lasseter - Sales - (Rogue Brewing) - Another awesome and appropriate topic was this one.  John spoke about the use of home-harvested ingredients and the different brews that Rogue is making with their own proprietary blends.  In this session, we sampled out the Chatoe Rogue Good Chit Pilsner http://www.rogue.com/beers/chatoe-good-chit.php , which was only just available in our market, so it was a special treat to get to try it out.

John Lasseter of Rogue

As I stated before, the sessions are a chance for people to get to know what they are consuming a little more intimately, get to hear some great stories about the beers and the people who surround it, and to ask questions of the very people who make it happen.  For next year, I have dedicated myself to thinking of the breakouts as the reason for the festival and not as an addition to the festival.  I feel that everyone who attended (and they WERE full) left with a little better understanding of this wonderful business that we are in and I feel very fortunate that we have been able to make it happen.  Cheers!