Tampa, Fla.—This is not a conference for the
faint of heart or weak of liver. The Beer Blogging & Writers Conference is
an emersion style conference where your every thought, sight, taste, smell and
hearing sense is filled with information about beer. It has been organized by
Zephyr Conferences, a branch of Zephyr Adventures, each year for the past seven.
 |
| Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference by Zephyr Conferences, Tampa, Fla. Copyright 2016 by Helen A Lockey |
This year the conference was held at the Marriott Tampa Waterside and
officially started on July 8 and went through July 10th. But there
was a choice of either a pre (Jacksonville) or post (Tampa/St. Pete) or both beer
tours making the conference experience last five days long. I chose just to go
on the post tour of St. Petersburg.
I also got to meet beer bloggers from all over
the country and the world. I met beer judges, and got to see behind the scenes
of local breweries and ask questions I might not have been able to ask on my
own.
 |
| Night Of Many Bottles event, Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference by Zephyr Conferences, Tampa, Fla. Copyright 2016 by Helen A Lockey |
And there was beer to be drunk everywhere,
outside the conference rooms, inside the conference rooms, at lunch, at dinner,
at mid-morning snack, at afternoon snack, on a bus between breweries, at
breweries, and at a live beer blogging event held at J.J. Taylor Distributing Florida, Inc.
I learned a lot, possible more than I intended
about the beer industry. It was still a lot of fun despite my first hangover
ever.
Turns out the Tampa/St. Pete area have recently
been voted the best beer area in the country with 60 breweries.
Next year, Zephyr Conferences is going to have
their Beer Blogging & Writers Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from August 3-6. You can
go to their website to register and find out more information.
But you won’t see me there because I’ll still
be recovering from all the beer I drank at the 2016 conference.
