8th Annual Indiana Craft Brewers Conference

Trevor Vance
Co-Founder & CEO

Trevor is a co-founder and serves as the Chief Executive Officer of VanceMitchem Public Affairs. He addresses the needs of the firm's clients using his several years of political experience by focusing on policy development, procurement, and legislative lobbying in the state legislative arena.

Chris Mitchem
Co-Founder & President

Chris Mitchem is a co-founder and serves as President of VanceMitchem Public Affairs. In this role, Chris supports clients from a wide range of industries by developming strategies to advocate for client priorites and also leads the communications services arm of VanceMitchem.

Craft Brewers and the Indiana Legislature

The 2023 Indiana Legislative Session is quickly approaching and the political environment surrounding alcohol policy is as complex as ever.

Join the Brewers of Indiana Guild's state lobbying team from VanceMitchem Public Affairs as they discuss what is on the horizon for the craft brewing industry in Indiana regarding upcoming policy discussions.

Consumers expect real-time, personalized communication, seamlessly choreographed across the channels and platforms they prefer, in a way that feels relevant and human. Our customer engagement panel, moderated by Arryved representatives Jordan Boinest & Brittany Lacey, features 4 different Indiana breweries and a cidery representatives and their current strategies and goals for achieving personal connections to their consumers that sustain beneficial business outcomes.

Cody Fague is a co-founder & Creative Director at CODO Design. Since 2009, he’s led branding efforts within the food and beverage industry, and spends his days helping craft breweries rebrand and redefine their foundational positioning, developing brand strategy, identity and internationally-recognized package design that sells more beer.

He has personally led the branding, or rebranding, of more than 70 breweries to date.

He is a co-author of CODO’s latest book, The Beyond Beer Handbook, and co-hosts CODO’s Beer Branding Trends Podcast.

Beyond Beer: A Brand Architecture Primer for Extending your Brewery’s Brand

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Is your brewery planning to launch an RTD cocktail, non-alcoholic beverage, hard seltzer or other non-beer beverage this year? If so, there are important branding considerations at play. Do you position this new offering alongside your beer portfolio, or under a new name? How do you promote it? What will your fans think? What if it sells better than your beer? 

Beer branding experts from CODO Design will walk you through a bullet proof decision tree to determine the best Brand Architecture approach for extending your brewery’s brand beyond beer.

You will then learn how Brand Extensions, Endorsed Brands and Sub Brands can help your brewery bring new products to market and grow your business—without threatening the brand you’ve worked so hard to build.

Ron Smith is a Master BJCP Judge (Beer Judge Certification Program), a Certified Cicerone®, a Beer & Brewing Educator, a Craft Brewery Consultant, and a European Beer Tour Guide. Ron has been homebrewing, judging beer, and supporting the craft beer movement for over 30 years, and has been teaching about beer for nearly 20 years. He teaches about all aspects of beer, brewing, ingredients, processes, styles, off-flavors, judging, beer and food pairing, and many more topics, and he consults with craft brewers on stylistic, quality, and technical issues.

Ron got involved in the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) in the early 2000’s and started conducting study groups and technical sessions to train others how to evaluate and judge beer. He ascended through the BJCP ranks and is currently a Master level judge (only approximately 125 of the over 8,000 judges are ranked at the Master or Grand Master level). Ron is a sought-after judge for professional brewing competitions and has judged in prestigious international competitions in the US as well as Mexico and Belgium.

Ron was also one of the first 100 Certified Cicerones® in the world. He has attended numerous educational seminars presented by many of the leaders of the craft beer industry, and has traveled throughout Germany, Belgium and the Czech Republic, learning first-hand about the beers, brewing processes, history and culture in those countries. Ron also leads Beer Tour Groups on incredible journeys through Germany and Belgium.

Ron also holds an MBA, with honors, from IU’s Kelley School of Business, and BA and AAS degrees from Purdue University, and he consults numerous businesses in the area of marketing and operations.

Off Flavors - Myth vs Reality

This seminar covers the traditional off flavors found in craft beer, including their typical detection, causes, and remedies, as well as some misconceptions about common off flavors and issues.

Kevin Smolar has been a part of Sun King Brewery since 2012. He worked his way through the tasting room, cellar, and then spent over 8 years managing the laboratory before taking on his current role as Director of Brewery Operations. Prior to Sun King, he had earned his B.A. in Biochemistry from Indiana University, M.S. in Biology from Purdue University, and M.S. in Forensic and Investigative Sciences also from Purdue University. While at Sun King, he has successfully completed his Certificate of Quality Control from the Siebel Institute of Technology and a Certificate of Sensory Panel Training and Management from Aroxa. He is an active member of the MBAA, ASBC, a BJCP Certified Judge, and a Certified TTB Chemist. Kevin is proud to have 10 roommates (wife, 4 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats, and a parrot) and often gets in trouble for referring to his wife as his roommate.

Building a Brewery Lab

Quality control is an often over-looked department of many breweries. Whether it's an issue of cost, ability, time, or insecurity, the brewery lab can be a daunting task to begin. In today's craft beer world, a poorly run quality control program can be the difference between mediocrity and award-winning beer. Additionally, as a brewery grows, the cost of a bad batch of beer can become more than monetarily damaging as consumer perception can negatively influence sales down the road.

Whether you have an established lab or are looking to buy your first microscope, this session will cover lab responsibilities for all levels of breweries. Topics include data management, necessary (and unnecessary) equipment, yeast management, analytical testing, and microbiological testing. The goal of this session will be to leave the audience with new knowledge and tools necessary to implement quality control protocols that they can start implementing immediately.

"Chris Deferio is an award winning coffee professional and coffee shop consultant with 22 years in the retail specialty coffee industry.
In addition to being a 3 time latte art champion and US Barista Championship finalist, Chris has been able to help thousands of people through his in-person speaking and training at trade shows, industry associations, and even outside of coffee in the world of restaurants, grocery, wine, and beer.

For the past 6 years he has been serving the specialty retail industry through his internationally recognized coffee podcast and consulting company, Keys to the Shop, where he gives his listeners and clients insights, inspiration, and tools to grow and thrive in their coffee careers and businesses.

Chris lives in Louisville, KY with his wife, son and an irresponsibly large collection of coffee mugs"

Crafting Culture: Tapping Into The Needs of Your Staff

As craft beverage professionals we obsess over the drink we love. Its history, nuances, and culture are all part of why we are passionate and driven to tend to the details so it can reach its full potential under our care. The question is, do we care for our staff as well as we care for the product we make?

Just like creating an amazing beer, coffee, or cocktail, crafting a great employee culture does not happen accidentally. In an increasingly saturated market, your culture is your competitive advantage that will give momentum to both the taproom and the production floor. A lack of meaningful and purposeful management breeds apathy, high turn-over, burn out, and toxic work cultures. If you want a staff just as dedicated to the success of your business as you are, then you need to first be dedicated to caring for them.

In this seminar, Chris Deferio will present the essential elements that go into successfully managing and caring for the people who make your business run. He will cover models for communication, building trust, utilizing feedback, and actionable steps to fully embrace your role as a facilitator of your staff’s success and ultimately the success of your business.

Isaac Arthur is a co-founder of CODO Design, an Indianapolis, Indiana-based beer & beverage branding firm founded in 2009 on the belief that they can create better work by directly including clients in the creative process.

He’s written three books, including the 'Craft Beer Branding Guide,' 'Craft Beer, Rebranded' and the newly-released 'Beyond Beer Handbook.'

He enjoys writing the Beer Branding Trends Newsletter each month for nearly 6,000 subscribers. He also co-hosts a podcast by the same name where he dives into the art and science of building stronger beverage brands while making fun of ESBs and extremely dumb, overly-bloated brand guidelines.

Beyond Beer: A Brand Architecture Primer for Extending your Brewery’s Brand

—

Is your brewery planning to launch an RTD cocktail, non-alcoholic beverage, hard seltzer or other non-beer beverage this year? If so, there are important branding considerations at play. Do you position this new offering alongside your beer portfolio, or under a new name? How do you promote it? What will your fans think? What if it sells better than your beer? 

Beer branding experts from CODO Design will walk you through a bullet proof decision tree to determine the best Brand Architecture approach for extending your brewery’s brand beyond beer.

You will then learn how Brand Extensions, Endorsed Brands and Sub Brands can help your brewery bring new products to market and grow your business—without threatening the brand you’ve worked so hard to build.

Aaron MJ Gore is the Senior Director of Business Development for Bevana. With a decade of sales, retail management, and business analytic experience in the craft beverage industry, he loves the opportunities that he has every day to make a difference for small business owners across the country. He is also an active industry advocate, public speaker, beer educator, and the father of two daughters who are the true passion of his life

Tea Leaves: Using Data to Manage a Smart Portfolio

If you don't know where you are, how can you know how to get to your destination? Far too often in craft beer, companies are forced to make decisions based on "feel" rather than informed by facts and information. But access to data doesn't have to be difficult, and finding useful guidance in that data doesn't have to be hard. In this session, attendees will learn the basics of interpreting and making use of their company's data, and how to apply it to real-world scenarios such as portfolio management, sales direction, and market positioning.

Moderated by Aaron Gore from Bevana, we'll talk with a distribution platform, a retailer/restaurant owner, and two local breweries about how they currently, or in the past have made self-distribution work for them and the key strategies they implement for success.