At the Craft Brewers Conference 2018 in Nashville, TN, we sat down with Creature Comforts, Rhinegeist, and Julia Herz from the Brewers Assocation to have an honest discussion about what it means to be a craft brewery.
The Craft Brewers Conference brought thousands upon thousands of industry folks from all over the world to Nashville. A week full of learning, collaboration, and some of the best beer breweries have to offer, CBC is always a celebration of the best things craft beer has to offer.
For our second year at CBC, we wanted to do things a little differently.
Everywhere you look, craft beer is booming. It’s on all the shelves. It’s in the news. Breweries are popping up all over the country. In 2017, there were over 6,000 breweries operating in the U.S. In 2013, there were only 2,822 (we say only even though that’s still an impressive number).
We wanted to have honest, uncensored, and raw discussion of what it means to be a craft brewery in 2018. Especially as one of the new kids on the block. We wanted to talk about the “stuff” that doesn’t get talked about – the stuff that takes a product and turns it into a liveable brand that’s rooted in an industry, celebrates a sustainable culture, and works hard to survive in an ever saturating market.
Creature Comforts (Athens, GA) and Rhinegeist (Cincinatti, OH), both regional craft breweries under the age of five years, joined us for this discussion. Julia Herz, the Craft Beer Program Director of the Brewers Association, joined us as the moderator.
