Catch Me If You Can: Beer Temple Podcast, BOPP, and Haas Hops Academy

Here’s a new quick format to share a couple places to catch me, and in some cases, hopefully catch you. I recently went on the Beer Temple podcast, so I’ll overview the topics we covered in case any of it piques your interest to throw on in your car. Secondly, I accepted two speaking engagements coming up in September, so I wanted to tell you about those real quick.

The Beer Temple Podcast

I joined my buddy Chris Quinn for a 1-on-1 chat on The Beer Temple podcast earlier this month. If you’ve never listened before, him and his co-host Mike Schallau of Is Was Brewing do a great job of changing up the formats for each episode to cover a wide range of topics, including industry roundtables on the news and topic-specific deep dives with experts. This one is just me and Chris having a few beers and talking mostly about whatever’s on our mind. Here’s what we touched on:

• Pitchfork! When asked what’s new, I explained how we (Revolution Brewing) just became the official beer of Pitchfork Music Festival, which is a big deal for us. We talk about some of what goes into that, why we did it, and what we hope to get out of it. Partnerships in general have been a big use of my time this year having signed on as the official IPA of Cubs Radio, Craft Beer of the Chicago Sky (WNBA), and Beer of the Chicago Hounds (MLR 🏉) all this Spring.

revbrewchicago

A post shared by @revbrewchicago

• Sierra Nevada Summerfest - As Chris was declaring his love for Sierra Nevada’s Summerfest seasonal, I was reminded that it’s a Pilsner. When I hear “Summer” in a brand, I unfairly think of a wheat beer, like Bell’s Oberon. Shooting from the hip, I proposed that the beer’s name is really smart and probably has gotten a lot more people to drink a Pilsner than would have if it was called, say Sierra Pilsner. Summerfest feels a lot more welcoming.

  By no means disagreeing, Chris reminded me of what follows Summerfest. Duh, the biggest seasonal of them all, Oktoberfest. Isn’t Summerfest a natural way to precede the already well known and celebrated Oktoberfest season? And with Oktoberfest being a lager, shouldn’t Summerfest be as well? Just of the paler variety? I’d never thought about it like that, but made perfect sense. This led to a discussion of the advantages that brewery’s with large back catalogues have, and how often nostalgia beers can come back AND when they need to go away.

sierranevada

A post shared by @sierranevada

• Montucky Cold Snacks - We talked about Gallo buying Montucky and couldn’t have agreed more. While it’s not a ton of volume now, Gallo should give the brand to Barstool Sports and make it go BOOM 💥. I make the crazy prediction that Montucky goes from a ~50K BBL brand to 1M BBL brand in ~5 years. That might have been the Summerfest talking, as the last discussion led to me ordering one at the bar, but we shall see. We both thought this was an acquisition with a ton of growth potential.

• Craft Volume 📈 , but Craft Dollars 📉 - Chris read in a Brewbound article that craft volume was trending up, but dollars were trending down. He wanted my take on how that could be, so I give my theory on the events that led to this unusual circumstance in craft sales data. I was shooting from the hip, and there’s always a ton of factors, but I think the narratives I laid out make sense. I might even do a whole post on this in the near future because it’s fascinating stuff.

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B.O.P.P. Conference (September 18-19th)

I am honored to be speaking on a panel discussion at BOPP: Beer Design Conference in Chicago this September 18-19th, run by Stout Collective. I tend to think of beer conferences like I would the batting average of a great Major League Baseball player. Not every session is a hit, but you can easily get your money’s worth with just a few great takeaways to bring back and put into action. BOPP buck thats trend with a full slate of panels and talks covering design and branding in the craft world and beyond, insights about the changing consumer and their decision making, and the state of the industry. They do not record the sessions in an effort to further encourage open sharing of information in a judgement free zone.

You all are welcome to join us for two days and experience true midwest hospitality and connections with a stellar creative community. I’ll be closing down the conference on Day 2 as a participant on a panel, playfully named ADAPT OR DIE (?). Stout Collective are readers of Beer Crunchers and were kind enough to give me a speakers code (Veliky15) to give you all 15% off, if interested in attending. You can learn more and register for BOPP here.

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Haas Hops Academy (September 23rd)

Lastly as far as timing goes, I will be in Yakama, WA on September 23rd speaking at Haas’ Hops Academy on a Beyond Beer Panel set to cover breweries diversifying their portfolios, the balance of technology/logistics, market penetration, marketing, regulatory compliance, and how hops were applied. Let me know if you happen to be there.

Here’s a few posts I’m drafting up at the moment to look forward to in the near future:

• The Taproom Love Language (Name Pending) - Focusing on the tough balance of promoting your locations and events on social media when your reach goes well beyond local, with a case study on the most successful solution I’ve been a part of, and how you can totally steal it or use the successful mechanics behind it.

• Who is drinking all this Montucky Cold Snacks? I got the answers

• Beer Data Wars: Episode 4: The Rise of Three Tier Beverages

• Inside Hop Water Data - Checking in on how the category is doing and highlight some examples of those having success.

Thanks as always for reading and especially to everyone who jumped to a Premium Subscription. It’s really fueling the motivation to crank out more and hopefully bring in some more contributors by the end of the year.