After a late Friday night at the Cincinnati Winter Beer Fest, I was up early and on my way to the first ever 5B: Believers in Better Beer, Bites and Blogging Conference. I woke up with quite a headache that was still lingering after a shower and getting dressed for the day, so I cracked open my last remaining bottle of Founders Breakfast Stout to start off the day. I figured if beer was involved in the conference there was nothing wrong with starting the day off this way.

Turns out I wouldn’t be the only one drinking before noon that day, as Troika Brodsky from Schlafly brought along some of their beers for us all to try. I wish more would have followed in his footsteps and brought beer along for us to sample, but that truly is my only complaint of the day. Maybe next time I should bring some beer along myself, I don’t think anyone would oppose.

Throughout the morning and afternoon there were various presentations and conversations that fit into one of the three main categories: beer, bites, or general blogging. Each hour there were three different sessions to choose from, one for each of the categories. I primarily stuck with the beer blogging track, even though I rarely write about beer (something that may change soon).

The first hour I sat in a presentation from Tamre Mullins of Girls Pint Out and Elle Potter of Zephyr Adventures as they filled everyone in on the upcoming Beer Bloggers Conference that is scheduled for Indianapolis on July 13-15, 2012. It sounds like a really cool event, and I may consider attending if my summer isn’t already busy enough. I know that my friend Adam, who was also attending the 5B conference, is also interested in going.

The next hour I did switch over to the general blogging session where Troika from Schlafly and Jay Kulpa, a freelance social media manager, discussed being a professional social media coordinator. Truthfully I wasn’t sure what the session was going to be about, but I knew there was beer being served, so I was in! Turns out Troika had a ton of very interesting stories about how he started the social media campaigns for the brewery on both Facebook and Twitter without anyone knowing. Now he serves as the communications director of the brewery and still manages the social media accounts.

Free Beer

After lunch (which I will write about later) I stuck with the brewery track. First I listened to the CEO of Christian Moerlein, Greg Hardman, tell us all about the brewing history of Christian Moerlein and provided us a very descriptive picture of what the Moerlein Lager House will look like when it opens in just a couple weeks on February 27. I was hoping for a tour, but I guess I will see it soon enough.

The next session featured three of the brewers of the Cincinnati Beer Week Barleywine, Mitch Dougherty of Rock Bottom, Jared Hamilton of Mt. Carmel Brewing and Jason Roeper of Rivertown Brewing. It was my first time meeting any of the brewers from these establishments and it was great to hear of the difficulties encountered while brewing, and how successful the beer was in the end. I later had a chance to talk with both Mitch and Jared more and they both were really great guys and very informative on their beers.

Finally, Tom Streeter of Hoperatives (the website who was more or less in charge of the conference) led a beer blogging town hall, where good discussion occurred on what things we’d like to see change in the Cincinnati beer community and how beer bloggers can be better involved with the breweries that are already in our city and those that are soon to open. It was a nice recap of all that we had learned and already discussed earlier in the day. As I wrote earlier, I really do hope that this becomes an annual event. I would definitely attend again.