Beer Bloggers at the Monarch Beverage Co. warehouse courtesy of Christopher Murphy.

Indianapolis hosted the third annual Beer Bloggers Conference in Indianapolis on the weekend of July 13-15, 2012. After all the camaraderie, learning and sharing of beers from around the country, people continue to ask me one question – why does a beer distributor get involved in this event?

After all, beer distributors are not normally a terribly visible group. We don’t do a lot in public. Mostly, we just get the beer from the breweries, bring it to your town and deliver it to the stores, bars and restaurants where you can buy it. Along the way we promote our brands, warehouse the beer, fill orders, get rid of bad or old beer, clean draft lines, and do all the other things that nobody outside the industry cares to worry about.

But times are changing. Consumers, like you, are starting to think a lot more about the choices you are making and want to be more informed. Seems to me that beer distributors need to change as well.

Honestly, there have been times when I wondered if the Beer Bloggers Conference was worth our time, effort and dollars. I don’t really have a great need for technical tips on blogging or ideas on how to monetize a website. And I don’t really need too many more excuses to drink another beer (or two!). But it became apparent to me at this year’s conference that none of that stuff was really what the conference was about. The conference is about building a beer culture. And few people are better equipped to help build a beer culture and help to promote it than beer bloggers.

Do beer distributors need to be a part of that process? The general public has done pretty well so far not paying much attention to us. But there is a growing number of us within the beer distribution world who are passionate about the way the beer world is changing. And we believe that beer distributors are important to that process and how it works – for either the benefit or detriment of the consumer.

So shouldn’t we be eager to be share our story (as distributors) with consumers? Inside the industry, we like to pride ourselves on bringing the largest selection of beer in the world to the American consumer at a competitive price. And that’s all fine for us to think about inside the business but if our story doesn’t make sense to the consumer perhaps we’re doing something seriously wrong to begin with.

So maybe we do need to do a better job of telling our story to you, the beer public. And perhaps we can listen to your concerns and learn a little bit in the process. I hope we did some of that in July and I hope we’ll get a chance to do it again in 2013.

As a sponsor of the conference for each of the three years it has been held, World Class Beer was quite naturally excited to help host this exciting and evolving event right here in Indianapolis. I’d like to take a moment to send a public thank you to Allan, Elle and Reno at Zephyr Adventures for creating and organizing the event. But my biggest thanks have to go to the beer bloggers themselves who make it such a huge amount of fun!

Check out the Beer Bloggers Conference website here and stay tuned for details on the 2013 conference in the months to come.