Live Beer Blogging

One of the liveliest, craziest, events at the Beer Bloggers Conference is also the one that is perhaps most fun and educational: Live Beer Blogging.

On Saturday afternoon, November 6th, up to a dozen breweries will be stationed around the main ballroom of the Boulder Marriott, each at a table of bloggers. Each brewery will have carefully chosen one beer to pour this day – perhaps a special seasonal beer, perhaps that brewery’s flagship ale, or perhaps a special beer brewed just for the conference.

Bloggers and other conference attendees will be seated at tables, poised to write. Some will have laptops keyed up to their blog admin page while others will have their cell phones dialed in to Twitter.

On the word Go, each brewery will have five minutes to pour its beer for those at its table, explain the beer, and answer any questions. Bloggers will taste, evaluate, and write about that beer in the same five minutes. The room will erupt with the voices of brewers and bloggers, the clink of glasses, and the clacking of keyboards. After five minutes, the organizers yell Rotate and the breweries move to the next table to start the process over. Twelve tables in all.

We have four breweries already signed up to participate, all from Colorado: Breckenridge Brewery and Great Divide Brewing from Denver and New Belgium Brewing and Odell Brewery from Fort Collins. These, beer bloggers of the world, are the brave breweries willing to take risks and sign up first. Yes, it is a crazy process that can seem daunting to both breweries and bloggers. Yes, time is limited (by design) and there is no luxury of either casually telling a story or lazily tasting a beer.

However, the process is fantastic. Brewers will have to identify exactly what it is about their beer – and their brewery – that is special. Bloggers will have to hone their skills, identifying what they like (or dislike) about each beer and efficiently putting that into words. In the end, this will be one of the signature events of the conference.

Bloggers, sharpen your metaphorical pencils! Breweries, whether in Colorado or not, sign up now for the remaining eight spots!