BBC16 Recap

The 2016 Beer Bloggers & Writers conference has passed and though we are now focusing on a great event for 2017, we want to recap and thank everyone who was with us in Tampa!!

This year, BBC16 was grateful to be invited to Tampa Bay, Fl and our partner and sponsor, Visit Tampa Bay did not disappoint in any way.  With a spectacular host hotel, 127 craft beer bloggers, writers, and other participants descended upon the sunshine state to see what this “up and coming” beer town had to show us.

Zephyr Conferences works hard to put on an event that has a good balance of beer and content…and as you can imagine, that is not always easy.  We had great speakers for BBC this year and were very lucky to secure top notch presenters to  bring important craft beer economic information, plus new tactics and new content strategies for writers coming in for #BBC16 from over 30 states.  We look forward to sharing those presentations with our 2016 attendees next week.

Adding to the balance of putting on a good writing conference is the location. Tampa Bay, Florida threw their hat into the craft beer writing gauntlet and came out shining.  Every single brewery and event that was presented to writers to was a hit.  Tampa gave us a great showing of locally-brewed beers, featuring some rare and even near-impossible-to-get brews for bloggers to enjoy.  I think our 2016 attendees would agree with Julia Herz from CraftBeer.com when she tweeted,  “you have arrived”

Event Highlights – The  first nights progressive dinner, organized and put on by the Tampa Marriott Waterside, set the bar high.  Perfect, small bites, paired with beers from Coppertail, Funky Buddha (holy smokes on the French Toast Double Brown), Green Bench, and Cigar City was amazing.   On day two, attendees were treated to a short trip to a four-course beer pairing lunch at World of Beer with MillerCoors.  Next up, the fun and speedy event of Live Beer Blogging was well put together by our gracious friends over at JJ Taylor Distributing Florida, Inc.  Finally, our Tampa experience was topped off with a beautiful beerventure organized and hosted by Visit Tampa Bay where all attendees got to drink and dine at all three of these local, grass roots, and hugely successful breweries: Ulele, Coppertail and Cigar City Brewing.  To all locations that hosted BBC16 attendees this year, thank you for having us…you put on quite a spread!

We look forward to reading all attendees’ blog posts about the conference, events, beers, breweries and experience.  Please post them in the comments below or throw them up on our blog tracker so we can see and re-share your content for you!

A special thanks to everyone who attended as we could not be doing THIS, without YOU.

Please follow @beerbloggers on Twitter and “like” our Facebook page.  Attendees and alumni can also request to join our alumni group to network and share information.

See you all in 2017!