After the whirlwind that was The Craft Brewers Conference in Minneapolis, MN, we wanted to distill our key takeaways into a few points.

Industry enthusiasm is strong.

After a couple years of Covid, the craft beer community had a strong showing to The Craft Brewers Conference this year. Almost 10,000 people from around the country and world came to network and learn in this 4 day conference. Conversations were lively and engaging in every corner of the convention hall and at late night events. At the American Barley Growers Association happy hour, we got to talk with other craft maltsters and barley farmers about the challenges we’re collectively facing and generate ideas to work toward solving them.

Climate Change is coming - what are you going to do about it?

Being an agriculture processing company in an industry that relies heavily on the climate, we knew there would be a lot of talk about the past year’s harvest and future outlook. Dr. Kenneth Blumenfeld and the rest of the panel on “Malting Barley Supply in a Changing Climate” mentioned that regional weather will become more extreme based on what it’s already doing. If it rains, it’ll rain more; drought… dryer conditions, etc. We’re certainly lucky to have a mild, Maritime Climate, but we won’t be immune to the future changes. We’re hopeful that our growers and processes will continue to adapt to a changing climate.

In the session “Brewing the First Carbon Neutral Beer,” a comment about shortening supply chains by working with local producers made our ears perk up! A quick way brewers can reduce their carbon footprint is by staying as local as possible. There isn’t a one size fits all way to do it, but reducing the things that produce the most carbon (fuel costs) is a great start!

Build your sensory panel now!

One of our goals this year is to dial in our sensory process and capture that data. There was a lot of validation during the session “Tasting from Field to Glass”. One main point for us - having the data can help in the creation of new products and the refinement of processes. There’s only so much information you can glean from a COA, so there should be sensory work to go along with that!

There are always great seminars and sessions, impassioned presentations, and deep conversations at CBC. We met old friends, made some new friends, and had juicy lucys. All in all, a great week for our team. Now to act on the things we learned to continue to be a part of a rising tide and help our customers make better beers and whiskeys.