Matilda Bay and Little Creatures co-founder Phil Sexton will give the inaugural keynote address at the second annual Australian Craft Brewers’ Conference, to be held in Melbourne on Wednesday the 21st and Thursday the 22nd of May.
The conference will be staged by the Craft Beer Industry Association (CBIA) during Good Beer Week at Melbourne Arts Centre’s ANZ Pavilion, located at 100 St Kilda Road, just a short walk from Flinders Street station and Federation Square.
On launching the programme, CBIA chair Dave Bonighton said the association has set the bar high for this year’s conference, securing a great new venue and strong lineup of speakers.
“Our committee has spent many months working on this, trying to find ways to improve on what we did last year and we think we have done that,” Bonighton said.
“Chief among these changes is the introduction of a keynote address to kick off proceedings. We are extremely fortunate that industry pioneer and legend Phil Sexton has agreed to deliver the inaugural ACBC Keynote.”
“Our industry owes Phil a debt of gratitude for the work he did in establishing craft beer in Australia and we look forward to hearing his views on where we came from and where he sees us heading.”
“We have also included more multi-person presentations this year in order to increase the variety of voices being heard,” Bonighton added.
Technical brewing presentations will include hour-long panels on hop and malt innovations and a presentation on yeast by the head brewer at the world famous Weihenstephan Brewery, Frank Peifer.
Industry leaders in the area of sales and marketing will present on topics including managing relationships with large retailers, exporting and social media. The interactive panels that generated so much discussion last year will also return for the final session of each day.
Another new feature of this year’s conference is a breakout room that will be the venue for a series of roundtable discussions.
“These will be limited to about a dozen people and will enable much more detailed discussions about some niche areas of our industry,” said Bonighton.
Also returning will be the ACBC Tradeshow, presenting attendees with an opportunity to interact with a number of industry suppliers.
Tickets are available now via the Good Beer Week website.