I attended the 2025 Craft Brewers Conference as media but I mainly think of myself as a beer consumer, just one who talks about it on a podcast. This being an industry event, it’s not really catering to me as a consumer but I thought it would be interesting to share my experience.

The Sessions

The conference schedule included a lot of sessions that make sense if you’re running a brewery or have a similar role in the industry. I didn’t attend many sessions but the people I talked to attended a few and were generally happy. Tuesday I went to a session that was about marketing and branding and navigating the current challenges and channels. It aligned nicely with Wednesday’s keynote which I wrote about in a previous post. The main things I got out of this one were questions to ask about brand strategy for future podcast guests; trying to understand their brand strategy if they have one. For instance, what themes tie your beer together? This session was mainly aimed at breweries that distribute, especially onto consumer shelves. There were similar concepts about branding a taproom and catering to your younger (adult) customers so they grow your brand for you.

The Events

There were a few main events for the conference. The welcome session was held at Lucas Oil Stadium. For those familiar with the stadium, we were in the main north entrance area. They had set up several tables of beer samples, had some snacks floating around, and had some pork fritter sliders (if you know an Indianapolis tenderloin sandwich, it was like that but smaller). The field was open for people to try kicking field goals (there was not much success at this but cheering when people made it), playing a very large version of beer pong, cornhole, Jenga, and other things like that. There was a lot of mingling around and people catching up with each other. I did not got to other main events.

There were “week events”. I called them “sideshow events” because that was how they felt. Breweries and businesses in the area had various events and let attendees know they were going on. I attended a 3 Floyds tap takeover at The District Tap (my New Zealand guests welcomed the opportunity), several concurrent events at Sun King, and a Pride event at Kismetic. All of these were well-attended. There were a lot of weirder events around, Guggman House had an event that involved canoes or kayaks or something like that; I did not get to go to that one.

The Show Floor

This was my favorite part of the conference for a few reasons. I made a lot of connections on the show floor; look for future guests from this conference! Whether they do come on the show or not, I had a ton of fun talking shop whether they were brewers, malters, hop growers, or manufacturers. There was a lot of variety around the floor and everyone there had a story or niche within this industry we love.

Another thing to love was the freebies. I have a nice collection of aluminum cups that will be my main patio cups going forward. I also have some nice coasters and other odds-and-ends but if I was a brewer then there would have been more things I’d have picked up like malt and hop samples.

But the best thing about the show floor? Samples. So many samples. This was different from a beer fest; breweries don’t have stalls there. So the samples aligned more with hop growers, malters, packagers, or just large sponsor booths that had a bunch of kegs and some taps. It was also unlike a beer fest in that people weren’t rushing from line to line, drinking as much as they could. The beers were nice to have but the booths were truly why people were there – go look at shiny equipment or learn about this new sensor or see what this particular brewery management software could do.

At the skunkworks lounge we were given a flight of 9 beers made by different brewers using some of the same ingredients and asked to vote for our favorite.

Consumer Thoughts

I’ll start by saying I did not come away from this thing thinking it needs to be open to the public. I think in general there will be enough media covered for your more interested consumers to get an idea of what the industry’s up to and what new and exciting thing might be coming (thiolized yeast, more hops that smell like marijuana). There were several podcast groups doing interviews and recording shows either on the show floor (Brewbound, specifically) or at Sun King (All About Beer) or who knows where else! I did not record any audio nor was I on any shows.

I did enjoy seeing all the industry people chatting and getting along. I frequently heard brewers digesting things from the keynotes and talking to each other about them. There was a lot of strategizing and collaborating. It reinforced something I think we already know: the people in this industry by-and-large get along with each other.