Location: Junior Ballroom 1
Speaker: Lexie Zielke, Blackbird Brewery

Many taproom model breweries understand the value of an event program based within the walls of your business. The typical events held at breweries (trivia nights, music bingo, live music, etc) seem to be essential these days in drawing a regular crowd. But how do you take your event programming a step further to create unique experiences and irreplaceable “fomo” moments? This session will outline how to extend your brand and culture further by imagining happenings and occasions specific to your brewery.

Location: Meeting Room
Speaker: Presented by Pablo Gomez, White Labs

This presentation explores how pressurized fermentation impacts yeast metabolism and beer flavor, with a focus on lager production. It explains the roles of hydrostatic and headspace pressure, how dissolved CO₂ influences key metabolic pathways such as ester and fusel alcohol formation, and how brewers can use pressure as a tool to produce cleaner, more efficient fermentations.

Location: Junior Ballroom 1
Speaker: Christa Donofrio, Owner, Beer Tooth Taproom

This session will discuss easy changes in breweries' taproom cultures resulting in more beer sales. As customers increase their craft beer knowledge, teaching bartenders about the product they are selling becomes important. Additionally, there are several behavioral adjustments that can be made with front of house staff to improve customer engagement and a feeling of community.

Location: Meeting Room
Speaker: Matt Gacioch, Bewers Association

Where does craft beer stand today, and where is it headed? Drawing on the latest Brewers Association data, Matt Gacioch will walk through the current state of the craft brewing industry, including production and sales trends, brewery openings and closings, shifting consumer behavior, and the market forces shaping the road ahead. Attendees will leave with a clearer picture of the national landscape and what it means for North Carolina breweries planning for the year to come.

Location: Junior Ballroom 2
Speaker: Spencer Tielkemeier, Yakima Chief Hops

With a rapidly-expanding array of liquid hop aroma options in market, brewers have more tools than ever before in pursuing high-quality, efficient, and cost-effective beer. Join the Yakima Chief Hops R&D team as they work to demystify the many types of liquid products, and explore how the principles of beer/hop solubility can have significant effects on recipe design and finished beer outcomes.

Location: Junior Ballroom 1

Breweries are finding different ways to welcome the communities around them, and for many that means figuring out where kids and dogs fit. This panel looks at what that actually looks like in practice: how breweries make room for families and pets, where they draw limits, and how those choices reflect the community each brewery serves.

Location: Junior Ballroom 2
Speaker: Alex Labonge, Next Glass

The session walks brewery owners through the key decisions involved in expanding beyond beer — from choosing the right new product (hard seltzer, RTDs, hop water, cider) based on equipment availability, margin potential, and tax complexity, to navigating compliance, staffing, sales channels, and brand strategy. A big theme is the "Brand Extension Test" — figuring out whether a new product fits under your existing brand or needs its own identity — and grounding every decision in a clear understanding of your brewery's "why."

Location: Meeting Room
Panel: Devin Singley, Local Time Brewing

A discussion about different rice types and how we use them in the brewhouse.

Location: Junior Ballroom 1
Speaker: Scott Kolbe, Market Your Craft

To show up meaningfully in AI Search results, producers should focus on the signals that reflect credibility and authority to AI models, including describing your space, promoting your events, adding FAQs, asking for reviews, writing press releases, and others. We'll help you control the AI narrative about your brand and share best practices outlined in our complimentary Guide for attendees titled, "Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): 10 Tactics In 10 Days For Showing Up In AI Search."

Location: Junior Ballroom 2
Speaker: Christopher Shepard

An open forum-style conversation about media response, covering the industry's status, alcohol, health, consumption, and small business closures.

Location: Meeting Room
Speaker: Alex Titov, Lallemand Brewing

This session provides a practical and science-driven overview of processing aids used in modern brewing. While many brewers are familiar with traditional ingredients, processing aids are often misunderstood, underutilized, or even avoided altogether. We will explore the full spectrum of processing aids - including enzymes, fining agents, stabilizers, antifoams, and antioxidants - focusing on how they work, where they are applied, and what problems they are designed to solve.

Location: Junior Ballroom 1
Speaker: Jimmy Petersen, Grandstand

Beer brings them in once. Merch brings them back… and sends them out into the world as your billboard.

Location: Junior Ballroom 2
Speaker: Luke Truman, New England Environmental Finance Center

Although small communities rely on the benefits craft breweries provide, brewery wastewater can drive a wedge between a town and a brewery. Brewer proactivity can prevent this and drastically improve community trust. Attendees of this session will better understand the impacts and real costs of mismanaged brewery wastewater on private and municipal infrastructure and treatment systems, the importance of developing a wastewater management plan, what documentation should be maintained, and low budget strategies to minimize negative impacts and improve sidestreaming efforts.

Location: Meeting Room

Location: Junior Ballroom 1
Speaker: Julie Rhodes, Not Your Hobby Marketing

Most owners pick one marketing channel, usually social media, pour all their energy into it, and then wonder why it is not working. Here is the truth: a single channel is not going to cut it anymore. Your marketing needs to be diversified, just like your product lineup and your revenue streams. We will cover what modern digital marketing actually looks like for a small team: using social for what it is genuinely good at, putting real weight on the channels you actually own like your website and email list, setting goals that match where your product is in its life cycle, building a content system you can keep up with, and tracking a small set of numbers that actually mean something.

Locatoin: Junior Ballroom 2
Speaker: Andrew Wright, Attorney, Allen Stahl + Kilbourne

This session will provide an overview of NC alcohol law, with an emphasis on avoiding violations and how to handle them.

Location: Meeting Room