Beer Bloggers And Writers Conference, Tampa, Fla.

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 10^th. 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.