Bean to Barstool
A podcast exploring the intersections of craft beer and craft chocolate.
Bean to Barstool
Allo & Rachel of Craft Connections Beverage Education Summit
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Craft beverage education is one of my passions, and I really believe that the more people learn about their favorite drinks, the more they’re able to enjoy them. Allo Gilinsky and Rachel Benkowski definitely agree. I first met this pair at last summer’s Crafted For Action conference in Atlanta, where they were co-presenting an education tasting. Since then, they’re announced the inaugural Craft Connections Beverage Education Summit taking place in early 2027, an event that will bring together craft beer professionals for conversations and presentations around how we can better provide useful, approachable education for both staff and consumers.
I recently sat down with Allo and Rachel to talk all about the philosophy and passion behind the Summit, why beverage education is so important, and how we can provide actionable tools for staff and consumers without overwhelming or talking over them.
You can learn more about the Summit, and find their social media links, on the event website.
You can listen to the previous episode with Master Cicerone Scott Fielder and Advanced Cicerone Chris Crowe mentioned in our conversation here.
Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.
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Craft beverage education is one of my passions, and I really believe that the more people learn about their favorite drinks, the more they're able to enjoy them. Allo Galinsky and Rachel Benkowski definitely agree. I first met this pair at last summer's Crafted for Action conference in Atlanta, where they were co-presenting an educational tasting. Since then, they've announced the inaugural Kraft Connections Beverage Education Summit, taking place in early 2027, an event that will bring together craft beer and cider professionals for conversations and presentations around how we can better provide useful, approachable education for both staff and consumers. I recently sat down with Alo and Rachel to talk all about the philosophy and passion behind the summit, why beverage education is so important, and how we can provide actionable tools for staff and consumers without overwhelming or talking over them. At the outset, I asked them to explain the basics of what the Kraft Connection Summit is all about.
SPEAKER_02So we're calling it Craft Connections Beverage Education Summit. Um and obviously it is a summit geared around beverage education. It is going to be in Tempe, Arizona, which is in the larger Phoenix Valley, February 16th, 17th, and 18th of 2027. And we're hoping to bring beer educators, cider educators, industry leaders, staff together to learn from each other, to engage with each other, and hopefully to bring some beverage education back to their prospective breweries or tap rooms or sideries.
SPEAKER_00I love that. That sounds great. Well, let's talk a little bit more about education. There are a number of beverage conferences out there. This one is specifically focused, as you said, on the idea of education, educating folks within the industry on how to pass that education on. Why is that so important? What does this provide for the average consumer?
SPEAKER_01I think it's really important because, especially where we all hear the beer industry is right now, that people need to come back to earth a little bit in terms of what beer beverage education is and also how to approach it on both sides of the bar. I think it's really helpful to be able for consumers to know exactly what they're ordering and be to led to answer the right questions about what they're looking for, as well as on the other side of the bar for team members to know how to ask the right questions and be empowered to dig a little bit more because ultimately hospitality isn't a transaction, it's relationship building.
SPEAKER_02Al had mentioned that the way that craft beverages are kind of shifting and moving and things are changing right now, that having not only staff that are educated and that can help sell your product and be an advocate for your brand, but also learning how to engage your customers in a different way, I think is really crucial right now for the longevity of breweries, cideries, and uh, you know, these tap rooms that, you know, we're very familiar with. Business owners are looking for different and new ways to engage their customers. And I think education is definitely a huge part of that.
SPEAKER_01And just to add on to that, real quickly, if you don't mind, I think we've all we've all heard, we've all experienced business owners are tired. They have so much going on, they're trying to keep their businesses afloat. So the more that they can do or the general broad community can do to empower their staff to take this on themselves and to have tools and resources available. So staff members find uh hospitality and beverage education to be approachable is also really important. That way, owners and GMs don't have to be doing all the legwork.
SPEAKER_00Let's talk about what we mean by education. What is it we're actually trying to be able to provide to consumers when it comes to beer or other beverages?
SPEAKER_02I think so. Ello and I have been using this word empowerment a lot. And I think this applies to not only the folks that are making and serving the beverages, but also to the consumers. I know I have worked behind the bar uh for many, many, almost 10 years now. And even though people have craft beer um as such a big part of their lives, they know they enjoy it. They kind of maybe know what styles they like or what they think they like, but they're not really great at knowing how to communicate what those things are. I always like to use the example when somebody comes in and they say, Oh, well, I really don't like hoppy beers. And it's like, okay, great. Well, but what do you mean by hoppy? Do you mean bitter? Do you mean you don't like a lot of citrus aromatics? You know, what do you mean? Nine times out of 10, they think that it means bitterness and their favorite beer is a hazy IPA. A hazy IPA is obviously an incredibly hoppy beer, but they just don't, they don't quite know how to communicate what it is that they're wanting.
SPEAKER_01I use that example all the time as well, but I'm also in my in my day job right now, I'm working with training staff on how to build their beer vocabulary. So again, it can relate to the consumer. And I'm actively working with a lot of my team members to eliminate hoppy from their vocabulary. Because if they can start training the person on the other side of the bar not to recognize hoppy as the be-all end-all, if they can say, okay, well, is it the pine and earthy flavors and aromas you like, or is it those soft tropical fruits, or is it bright citrus notes, you know, that is such a better way to describe what's in the glass rather than hoppy, which sometimes has maybe a negative connotation to it.
SPEAKER_00I think uh when you're talking about staff here, I think one interesting thing is that from both the consumer side and also probably from the ownership side, there can sometimes be the assumption that point of service staff has more beer knowledge than they actually have. The owner assumes we all work for a brewery, so obviously we know beer. And the the consumer assumes that uh anybody who's working for this brewery can answer their questions. But a lot of time that service staff might be coming from the restaurant industry or might have worked in a bar before, and this might be the first brewery they've ever stepped into, and they're good at service, but they may not know anything when it comes to beer styles or ingredients or things like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, it's a real challenge, and again, it all comes into buy-in. Somebody might be coming to do uh a service shift job for eight hours every week, or it could be 40 hours every week. Everybody's buy-in behind the bar is going to be a little different. And again, I think it does come back to that word empowerment, but also approachable and accessible education for these staff members. Something, again, I'm doing right now in my day job is I am creating, I've created an internal training program, but I'm also developing flashcard decks. Flashcard decks all about hops, all about beer styles, so that they have no reason to say they don't have this information at their fingertips when it is an app you can download on your phone or on the company tablet. It's something that they will be able to have available, and also just making myself as available to my team members as possible and saying, hey, you got questions, come to me.
SPEAKER_00So I recently had Master Cicerone Scott Fielder and Advanced Cicero Chris Crow on the show. And we were talking a little bit about how to communicate that information to a consumer who maybe is never going to become a beer expert. They want this information to be able to enjoy beer better and to be able to, you know, pick out their next uh drink. And I'm really interested in uh both your perspectives on uh the balance between accessibility and actually by providing useful information. Because I think one thing that I'm seeing in the drinks industry in general, even beyond beer, is a from a very good uh motivation, the desire to cut down on gatekeeping and and talking over people and throwing a bunch of knowledge at people that they don't have any context for. But sometimes that means that we're not providing any information and we're stripping things down to so much simplicity that we're not actually giving people that next step they can take if they want to. Do you guys have any thoughts on how we uh provide useful information to consumers in a way that is accessible? It isn't gatekeeping, but does allow them to move further if they want to.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I can speak uh personally to uh this. And I mean, I understand that my situation is uh unique and different from everybody else's, but um, and this kind of leans into events and consumer engagement at breweries, providing some sort of very casual monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, even uh beer school or some sort of gathering where folks can come together, you get a flight of beer, and then it is guided by whomever your brewer, the owner, tech room manager approaching it. You know, people are really familiar with wine tastings, but a lot of the folks outside of the beer industry uh have never really sat down and properly walked through how to assess and taste a beer. I lead a beer school at the brewery that I work for once a month. It's really cool to watch people's palates expand, their vocabulary expand, um, and just overall learning about how to approach beer. I've also seen on menus that people have tasting notes or food recommendations or just like little interesting blurbs about all of the beers that they're serving. I think that can be really helpful too. Listing for, let's say, uh a stout could have tasting notes of cacao, you know, drip coffee, things like that, kind of helping people think about what it is that they're drinking as they're drinking it.
SPEAKER_01First of all, I mean, I just love what Rachel put out there. It really is about making it accessible to the consumer. And I do like to use that term kind of critical drinking, you know, doing more than just sipping it and swallowing it. And in terms of connecting with consumers as well, something that I preach out there is for everybody behind the bar to find personal connections to the flavors you're selling or find ways to associate beers with occasions. You know, where might somebody want to take these beers afterwards? And that's also leans into upselling. I was working with a brewery in San Diego last summer and they had a milksout in July, and they were having a hard time getting out the door to go. And I said, okay, well, let's taste through this milk stout together. And to me, I got notes of roasted marshmallow and some graham cracker. It kind of tasted like a liquid s'mores. And I realized, okay, you're 10 to 15 minutes from the beach. Have you thought about positioning this as a bonfire beer? You know, that's a really great way to say, okay, where are you headed next? You tasted this in-house. Would you like to take a four-pack to your picnic to the ballgame, to the lake, to the beach? Where are you going that these beers might be able to become another part of the experience? And then also having that mean something new. You know, we all come from such unique backgrounds that we all have different flavor perceptors. And if you can be behind the bar and reach out to a customer and say, hey, this reminds me of X, Y, or Z, and they might, their eyes might light up because they may not have thought about a sour beer tasting like Skittles or Jolly Ranchers. But that might bring them back to a point in their childhood where they say, Oh, I really like those flavors. Let me try that.
SPEAKER_00One thing that I think is really challenging with beer specifically, and I'm interested in both your perspectives on this, is the idea of styles and how we present that idea to consumers, uh, both in the sense that within a style taxonomy, you have well over a hundred different styles to learn. So you've got so much information to begin with. But then beyond that, the idea of styles to begin with. Is styles the right place to start with this? Is this what we should be presenting to the consumer? What do you both feel about that? What are kind of the moving pieces with that?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I have I have multiple feelings. I mean, I I think that we're seeing a big shift in how categories and styles are presented on beer menus. It's not the same as it was in 2017, 2018, where you had, you know, 14 to 16 beers on a menu and there were maybe seven different subcategories broken down. I think people got bogged down in that a little bit or trying to discern the difference. Well, do I want an amber lager or an amber ale or a Vienna lager? Do I want a double IPA or a triple dry hop hazy IPA? There's a lot of nuance, but I'm seeing a lot more places go back to, okay, light and crisp, multi, fruit forward, things like that that are more categorical. And I don't know that I love that for the well-being of the BJCP broken down styles, but it is finding this healthy balance of what makes sense for each location's individual consumer and where in the general geographic world you are and where in the beer space you are. You know, what kind of brewery and third space are you?
SPEAKER_02I do agree that it depends on where you are and what your consumer is like. Um, you know, some places tend to really draw in beer nerds that want to sit down and talk about hot varietals and flavor perception and all of that sort of stuff. Uh, and then there's other places that you go where maybe it's more of a touristy area and people, it's just kind of turn and burn, right? Like people are there, they're not necessarily vested in uh all of the nuances and the details of your product. They're there to have a good beer, sit on the beach, and then move along. I think that the best way to kind of hook line and sinker people into getting more interested in what it is that they're drinking. And Allo had kind of touched on this earlier, is how can you help make it personal for somebody, feel special? Uh, how do you make somebody feel welcome in a space that they want to come back to? Because they're going to get those nice, warm, fuzzy feelings about good experience that they have at places. Oh, I had this delicious, you know, porter and the I met this really cool person that was sitting at the bar next to me. And so I think reaching people on a personal level of making things and education accessible. Maybe when somebody comes in, you ask, you know, what what kind of flavors do you like? Make it more like a personalized experience, make them feel like they're making a good decision, make them feel welcome and special. And then that kind of gets them, I think, a little bit more intrigued that they're going to want to come back, maybe talk to that staff member a little bit more again about something different, maybe try a different style of beer that they've never tried before. Um, so I think it's it's all it's all connected in the place of meeting the consumer where they're at and then making them feel good about how they want that experience to go.
SPEAKER_01And I just want to give a quick shout-out, if I can, to a brewery that I've been to in the last few months that did a really exceptional job of this. I was visiting Bend, Oregon, and I went to Teranaut brewing. I don't know, David, if you've been there or Rachel, you've been to Bend. Teranaut is a throwback in the fact that it's still in a warehouse in an industrial park. And you walk in and you're like, this is still a thing. And I really wish that me of 2016, without all the beer knowledge that I have a decade later, had been able to walk in there and see it through my beer journey eyes then. But going in there, you see a chalkboard with styles listed in the proper order, you know, from light to malty to hoppy down to dark beers. And you see the glassware they're all served in. And you see a little dot, a colored dot denoting what that glassware will be on each beer in the menu. And they had four styles of glassware. So it wasn't overkill, but they had more than just one or two. They had four styles of the proper glassware with the name written under each of them. They had a note saying we don't serve flights, but we serve five-ounce pores. Ask us why if you'd like. They're making that education a front and center because it's on a chalkboard. It's the first thing you see if you walk directly through those garage doors into their tap room. And they're providing tasty notes. They're providing those three or four bullet point notes next to the beers on that board. And I was just like, I was taken aback in such a good way to see them put stock in that. And it really I really loved it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that brings up the idea of what we do put on menus. You both talked about that a little bit. You have such an economy of space to be able to say anything about these beers when you're looking at a menu, and even less usually when you're looking at uh a tap list on a wall. I've seen a movement toward just tasting notes, maybe three or four keywords that broadly describe and indicate what a beer is going to be. Uh and that's where I feel like I see a lot of that pressure point of I I understand why this is accessible, why this is good for maybe 90% of consumers. Uh but also is there a little bit of patronizing in like not providing that next step of additional information? Like, what do you what do you both take on what we should be putting on something like a menu to be able to accurately but accessibly describe these beers?
SPEAKER_02I mean, I I think that again, it comes down to what your consumer um or what what your what your place is like. Is it a place that is promoting uh beer education, or is it uh uh more of a brew pub restaurant sort of thing where people are coming in to to dine and and have a beer, but not necessarily sit there and and think about the beer? I think having some tasting notes on there is great. I love, and this is just me personally, I love not seeing IBUs on menus so much anymore. I think that was just it is just such a limiting metric that doesn't really do anyone any good. So that's something that I've personally been noticing that has not been around as much lately, and I think that that's really, really great. But I mean, I think having tasting notes is great. I think having the ABV on there is great. And then if you are serving food, maybe either on the food menu, have like we suggest, uh X beer to go with X dish, or having a little glass indicator next to the name of an entree and then have a matching little glass icon on the beer menu so you know what could pair with what. But again, that it I think it all comes down to what it is that you're trying to accomplish at your business. And no two businesses are the same. So I don't know if there's a hard and set answer that is correct uh across the board.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree with a lot of whatever a lot of what Rachel said there, but I do think that there's a couple points here. I do love the idea of having a few tasting notes by each beer or by each dial category if they're similar beers on a menu. I also want to make the point of they don't just have to be flavor and aroma words. I think words that describe the moment or describe the type of beer, like a Belgian beer, classic, brilliant, pairs great with food, something like those, something that connects you with the moment you're drinking and not just gonna sit there frustrated why you're not pulling out clove when the person across from you is pulling out clove. And then I also think that I think bartenders and the staff need to be able to have those words also memorized. If you're gonna put tasting notes on your menu, you got to make sure that they're also ingrained. You can't say, oh, well, I read that you can't sit down and you know, people do it differently. People are gonna come up to the bar first, or they're gonna make themselves settled first, look at a menu, and then go up to the bar. You can't have somebody sit down, look at a beer list, say, oh, this is notes of toffee, fig, and prune, and go up to the bar and ask the person on the other side, hey, can you tell me more about this beer and have that bartender stammer their way through it? I think that if you're gonna have tasting notes on a menu, you need to empower the staff behind the bar to also have those notes in their head or have their own notes in their head, but have something. You got to have it both ways.
SPEAKER_00At the point of service, what are those basic fact-finding questions that you give staff to ask to be able to then make the recommendation that's going to please the customer?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think first of all, it's the good old have you been here before? Versus the what do you like to drink? I mean, those are some of the more generic ones, but I do think people can dig deeper and do a little bit better. If people are in a brewery, they're typically there to either enjoy a style they've had before or explore the flavors of a new place. So I think asking questions like, okay, what styles have you enjoyed before? Or what do you see on the menu that appeals to you if there are nice written descriptions on the board above them or on the menu in front of them? And then asking, what flavors do you like? Do you like do you like lighter, crisper, breadier flavors? Do you like darker, fruitier, toffee-like flavors? There's those key aroma and flavor words you can ask before a customer makes a sale.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I agree. Um, I like to just ask, what sort of flavors do you like? Like just generally? It doesn't have to be beverages. What what what kind of fruits do you like to eat? Do you like really dark coffee? Do you like espresso? Do you like lattes? Um, just kind of helping people find ways to communicate things that they enjoy. And then it's my job as the beer tender to translate that into whatever it is that we have available. And hopefully we have something within that vein.
SPEAKER_01I mean, we are guides behind the bar. We are isn't Cicero an Italian for guide or leader? I mean, we are kind of these guides, these shepherds behind the bar.
SPEAKER_02It's not as overwhelming as some people might make it out to be. Certainly, there are, you know, over a hundred different styles of beer, several of which most people have never heard of or might never have if they don't travel to the other side of the world. But that doesn't mean that you can't. Find a whole new world of exciting things to discover and learn at your local brewery. And I think trying to spark that intrigue, that excitement, and that want for adventure in learning about your palate and what the extent of brewing can do, I think is important to hold on to our customers, especially in a time like it is right now where people are kind of fading away for lack of a better term. So yeah, there's there's so many different ways to engage your consumers. We just have to tap into that a little bit more, try to get people excited about beer again.
SPEAKER_01Rachel makes some amazing points there. I mean, I think she and I are so aligned in the power of beer education. As these bartenders, we want you to come on this journey with us. And therefore, I think it's great to be able to always have a couple favorite beers or styles on your list at the go, you know, at the ready. Because sure, we might have perceived biases against styles that we don't like that don't fit our palettes, as people who drink beer, who have studied beer a lot. But if you can if you can show the excitement behind the bar, I know everybody's busy, people are doing a bunch of things at once, but if you can be amped up about three to five beers on your board that shows your enthusiasm about the product, that's going to translate or hopefully should translate to the person on the other side of the bar. And they're going to want to be excited to come on this journey with you. And I think that's also a missing piece of the hospitality element.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I would just add, and I'm sure you'll both agree that if any brewery out there that wants to begin staff education but feels overwhelmed at how enormous that project could be, start somewhere. This doesn't have to be as robust as you would eventually like it to be. I do some staff education on a freelance basis. So coming into breweries as an outside speaker. And we have a brewery near me that has four locations. And they hired me to come in and start doing staff education. And at the very first event, I've got 50 employees from these different locations. And it went fine, but I felt like at the end, like, I don't know, were people really paying attention? Were they really invested in that? Next time we got together, the general manager said that their average Yelp score had gone up after that class because uh the staff was actually taking it to heart, even though it didn't feel like it. And I and I felt like it was so like we're just starting so basic, but even just providing a few simple tools and a signal to the staff that you care and that you're invested in them will deepen their buy-in and change their perspective on the point of uh of hospitality. So if if you're working for a brewery out there, start somewhere. You can always build on this program down the road.
SPEAKER_01I just finished uh reading Unreasonable Hospitality, and that was a fantastic book, all by Will Guadara, who uh was very involved in 11 Madison Park. And it's just such a great tone of what he suggests, unreasonable hospitality. But part of it that stuck with me is again this word empowerment and finding the gems in your staff. He found the guy on his staff who was obsessively talking about trying the new beers at these breweries in Brooklyn and around. He elevated him to beer buyer. And then he was chasing him down the hall the next year, hey, have you heard of this beer? Hey, have you heard of that style? We should have this. It pairs great with these food items. That person eventually got promoted to GM of 11 Madison Park. So if you have somebody on your staff, maybe, maybe they're maybe they're completely green to beer, but they come from a barista background where they're really in deep with flavors, like they love coffee beans, they like talking about flavor, and you can find those little nuggets from these people. Tap them to maybe say, hey, take three hours a week out of your schedule and map out some beer education programming for us. I'd love to see what you give us. It's it's about showing the enthusiasm for your staff and finding the people who can, you know, help rise the ship, as this, as the saying goes.
SPEAKER_00And that's a fascinating idea. The idea of having a staff member almost be like a co-learner, along with, I mean, obviously, you're going to need to be able to verify some materials to make sure accurate information is being shared, but empowering your most curious staff member to say, hey, why don't you like how are you learning about this? Maybe you can help your coworkers learn about this with you. I think it would be a really interesting direction for that to go. Absolutely. Well, let's talk about the Kraft Connections Summit. I know uh Rachel introduced that a little bit at the beginning, but let's dive in in more detail. What is going to be involved in this event in Tempe, Arizona?
SPEAKER_01So we've built craft connections on three things we largely saw missing from other conferences, educational gatherings around the beverage industry in the last couple of years. Actually, this idea was born about a year ago today, as Rachel and I were leaving Crafted for Action in Atlanta, where I saw where we saw you, David. So this is kind of a reunion of sorts where this idea started percolating, where we wanted to find, we wanted to create a space and a movement that was built on three things: networking and connection, staff education, and sensory learning. And that's really gonna be the bulk and the gist of what we're doing here. And we want it to be interactive. We're not using the word conference as much. We're trying to stay away from that. We don't envision this to be panel upon panel of people talking about things like malt enzymes and how products can enhance your brew kettle, or about the Doom Loop and the movement of craft beverages. We're getting people together in a space to do and to talk with one another and to workshop. We want to have some signature events like speed networking. We want to have some things like hands-on sensory learning through off flavors or hop flavors and extracts. We want to have a build-in-your beer vocabulary workshop. And we're trying to invite some of the brightest minds around the beer world that we're connected with to lead those workshops.
SPEAKER_00Let's talk about then some of the specific topics. Give us some examples of what some of these sessions are going to be.
SPEAKER_02Ello touched on that just a little bit. So he and I are gonna kind of spearhead the networking sessions. So things where uh people are coming together face to face, either kind of in a forced way, for lack of a better term, meaning, like he had said, you know, speed networking. So you get three three minutes at each table, everyone brings a business card, you sit down and you talk to each other about what you do, exchange business cards, and that'll hopefully kind of break the ice in that you're not in a huge room of you know 500 to a thousand people, and everyone's kind of in their own little clicks, and you don't really know anybody, and you don't know how to approach people and things like that. We don't want it to be overwhelming, we want it to feel very communal and having people, you know, come together and actually make meaningful connections to hopefully collaborate with each other in the future. And then sensory learning, so off-flavor training, uh style identification, maybe some food and beer pairing sessions. We're still nailing down all of our proposals right now. So we don't have anything hard and fast, um, but these are kind of some general ideas that people have submitted so far. And then staff education. So anything from how to create engaging and interesting events at your business. So how to get new consumers in the door or how to teach your current consumers something new and exciting that they're gonna tell their friends about and you know, come try this or come to this beer school or come to this beer pairing dinner with me, learning how to how to talk to the consumer, um, using proper descriptors, uh, like Alice said, building beer vocabulary.
SPEAKER_01I think it's just gonna people are gonna have to wait and see what what we what we promote out there. Because as I said, we are still sifting through proposals. And I think there's just there's gonna be a lot of stuff that's really good about you know small brewery, small business branding as well, you know, how to market and position your brewery. I think part of this is as much as we've said we want front-of-house staff and GMs to be there. Hospitality is a business that goes into marketing and event planners. And there's a lot of breweries who do higher outsource marketing these days. And so maybe you want your marketing team or that firm you hired to come in and learn how to talk beer. And so we're looking for people from all over the spectrum of the front-of-house hospitality side of beer to come in and learn with us and from us.
SPEAKER_00We've obviously focused almost entirely on beer here, but I understand there's gonna be a little broader scope than that. What kind of is the extent in terms of beverage segments that might be this might be relevant to?
SPEAKER_01So we wanted to be as inclusive as possible, and we originally were gonna target beer, wine, and cider. Rachel and I are so far from the wine world, though. So we said, let's start small, let's let's be small, let's stick with what we know and who we know. We we met some really great cider mines at Crafted for Action last year, and they're both beverages that do have a lot of similarities. So we would love to also have some cider enthusiasts join. We are working hard to get some cider people involved. It was originally going to be right at the back end of when CiderCon usually is, so it's been a tougher sell to the people to come and present. However, CiderCon has now moved to be lined up with uh Crap Brewers Conference in April, not early February. So now that they no longer coexist in the same two-week frame, we're hoping that we can get some more cider people involved to again bring cider enthusiasts and cider taproom people in to learn about cider sensories, cider descriptors, cider off flavors. If we can have you know beer and cider coexist in some workshops, we'd love that as well.
SPEAKER_00So if people want to be involved with the summit, if they want to attend or or get other information, where can they go? What do they need to know?
SPEAKER_01So we are online. We are at beverage.education.summit on Instagram. You can follow us there. We're gonna be posting some great content, trying to reel people into the there'll be appeal and the allure of beverage hospitality. Our website is also beverageeducation summit.com, all one very long word. But you can go on there and you can see a bunch of information about what you expect, our proposed itinerary. We're also working with some great hotel and transportation partners. So we're gonna have a hotel room available for a discount rate. We're gonna have a free shuttle available for people to come from that hotel to the summit, which is gonna be at Four Peaks Pub. I don't think we mentioned that, Rachel. Uh our summit's gonna be held at Four Peaks Pub in Tampay, Arizona. Uh, they have graciously given us their space. We think it's gonna be really exciting to have this inside a live working brewery. They have some fan, they have a barrel room, they have a patio, they have some great spaces in the back of the production facility that we're gonna be working with and presenting and playing in. So that'll be kind of cool to have that experience inside a working brewery.
SPEAKER_02Early bird tickets are on sale as of August 1st. So if you're interested in attending, definitely jump on that now to save some money.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Uh tickets are gonna be priced $125 total for the two-day summit. Early bird pricing is gonna be $99. So you'll say, you know, save save $26. We want this to be accessible. Again, we're talking about accessibility and empowerment. We don't want to turn anybody away.
SPEAKER_00Sounds awesome. Well, my last question: this whole project feels like it was really born out of your friendship. You guys have been presenting together for a little while. Uh, I saw you both together, like you mentioned last year at Crafted for Action conference down in Atlanta. Real quickly, how did you guys get connected and realize you were birds of a feather when it came to beer education?
SPEAKER_01Oh boy. Rachel and I met on Instagram about three-ish years ago now. I think I just messaged her saying, Hey, I love this video you did about Belgian beers. I'm a Belgian beer head too. Would you like to talk or collaborate sometime? And collaborate, we have.
SPEAKER_02We certainly have.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_01Rachel has visited me in both my uh original town of Boston, and we also just happenstance met up in San Francisco a couple weeks ago on a on a whim. And I've been down to Arizona to visit Rachel. We presented together, we've done a couple Instagram lives together. So we both love Belgian beer. We love, we like to talk. We're we're we're beer people people. And I think that's really where we click. And I'll let Rachel agree or disagree with me there.
SPEAKER_02No, no, I agree. And I think Al and I are just naturally very aligned on uh, you know, why we're doing what we're doing, the the level of passion and excitement that we have about these beautiful beverages and how there is a beer for everybody, and we want everybody to try as much of it as possible because that just I think makes us so excited to see people light up when something clicks that they didn't quite understand before. Or I have never had a beer that tasted like this before. How is this beer? Like that's I think that's what we both are motivated by.
SPEAKER_01And I think it's really special to actually be able to come together and build something about connection, the way Rachel and I connected. You know, we have brought in a virtual friendship to life and to be able to bring other people together in a way whether it's we've connected with them virtually, like there's some people in the you know, beer Instagram or virtual media space in beer that we have never met before that we'd love to have at this conference, that we've had some proposals submitted to from this conference. So to be able to bring those people, you know, kind of off the page as it may be, would be really cool to see happen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love that. That's really cool. Well, Allah, Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today. Best of luck with the summit, and I'll look forward to seeing what comes next, Rebo.
SPEAKER_01David, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00If you want to listen to my earlier conversation with Scott Fielder and Chris Crow that I mentioned in the interview, I'll put that link in the show notes. I'll also drop the link to the Craft Connections Beverage Education Summit website and socials so you can check those out. Big thanks to Allo and Rachel for coming on the show today, and thanks to all of you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Being Department.