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#BBC17: Takeaways From A Beer-Soaked Weekend

What. A. Weekend.

I warned you fine folks last week that I’d be attending the Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference, held here in lil’ ol’ Milwaukee, and that there’d be plenty of beer-pictures on social media this weekend. A combination of over-excitement, fantastic foods, and unending beer resulted in a final tally of 27 Insta-fam pics. You’re welcome.

BBC17 crowd at the new Pabst Brewery MKE. All photos by Joe Powell for The Squeaky Curd unless noted.

But I left the Friday-Sunday funfest with more than just a memory card of photos, a sore throat, and new appreciation for the musical stylings of the drummer from the Violent Femmes: my notebook is chock-full of questions (currently) without answers and #deepthoughts. Here’s a short list of takeaways from the weekend, many which I intend to turn into full-fledged articles in the future.


Questions (currently) without answers:

  1. Will breweries start adopting the new #IndependentBeer logo the Brewers Association has established to verify that a brewery is not owned by one of the macro beer makers? (Fun fact: on Sunday we saw the symbol prominently displayed at Broken Bat Brewing Company.)
  2. What is the rate of diversity in both brewery workers and beer drinkers in Milwaukee? (Nationally it’s pretty terrible.)
  3. Did you know there is a House Small Brewers Caucus in Congress? For bipartisanship, simply add beer.
  4. Are brewers in Milwaukee held on the same pedestal as our award-winning chefs?

Russ Klisch serving at his own Lakefront Brewery.


#DeepThoughts

  1. “What do you taste? Blurt out words from your lizard brain!”
  2. “This one’s a drive-by tasting. Mmmmmhmmmmm. You don’t have to hum.”
  3. “Be on the lookout for memories, not specific words.”
  4. “You can’t think of tasting as one moment in time. Take a little taste. Spread it around.”

Me drinking Dylan with THE Dylan at Lakefront Brewery.


The whirlwind 2.5 days closed with me having the opportunity to give a 5-minute “Ignite” presentation about leveraging custom maps on a blog (as I’m wont to do) to the assembled crowd of global and local influencers. It was beyond compare.

Me giving my Ignite presentation. Photo by Brian Welzbacher of Oklahoma Craft Beer and Beer Is OK.

Thanks BBC for the good times and great beers. For our readers: be prepared for the answers to those questions above coming your way.

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