Tag: Craft Beer Community
Caaalifornia Looooove š¶
Our beer festival app was back on tap at another awesome brewfest last weekend. This was our first event in California, which is a tasty addition to other events we support in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, and Maine. We collaborated with event organizers who were looking for something fresh for the 29th annual California Brewers Festival.
Brewers from throughout California were introduced to our slick vendor portal for the first time. Feedback was fantastic, as we heard many of them share how easy it was to craft their menu in minutes. Breweries, cideries, wineries, and distilleries all looked sharp, while attendees got to see all that was being poured. After gates opened, beer lovers had fun tracking a few favorites and organizers appreciated the creative support our team provided every step of the way.
“This new thing seems cool!” -Touchstone Brewing, Sacramento
Hit http://FliteBrite.com/CalBrewfest to taste the #CalBrewfest app in action. Our team had fun showcasing this beer festival through @FliteBrite on Instagram and we hope you enjoy sipping on our data-driven festival summary that celebrates all our new friends brewing magic in California.
Hosting a beer festival? Let’s chat.
We deliver good vibes.
Yes, our friendly team serves up the best beer festival app in the market, a data-driven way to understand the taste profiles of customers in taprooms, and a patented electronic serving system, but the crafted dedication our customers FEEL, is what makes FliteBrite remarkable.
Your team will be delighted in the time you save, new profit channels unlocked, and savvy support delivered to those you seek to serve. The peace of mind that comes with collaborating with our fun, creative, and experienced team makes a partnership with FliteBrite a key ingredient that ignites more freedom of expression for professionals thirsty for what’s next. Let’s chat.
The inaugural TAP 2022 Brewfest celebrated innovation as 44 Minnesota breweries poured close to 200 different craft beers and hard seltzers.
Hosted in Shakopee, this community-driven event started something special. 750+ thirsty attendees enjoyed perfect weather and this well organized beer festival. Everyone had fun and as you can see in our festival summary, attendees used the TAP 2022 app to track more than a few favorites in our beer festival app. As a tasty bonus, Otso Cycles gave away a sick gravel bike to our Best of Fest winners, Kinney Creek Brewery from Rochester! Special thanks to the City of Shakopee and all our new friends brewing innovation throughout Minnesota. Cheers to our latest Best of Fest winner, enjoy #TAP2022 highlights below, and we’ll see everyone back in Minnesota soon!
RUN A BEER FESTIVAL? LETāS CHAT.
350+ winter beers, ciders, and spirits were celebrated at the 10th annual Coralville BrrrFest!
60 Iowa breweries, cideries, and distilleries poured their creative concoctions for over 2,000 thirsty attendees. Whether it’s feeling the VIP gold rims, smelling casks being tapped, seeing friends having fun together, or hearing the roar of broken glass, brewfests are back and we’ve got the best beer festival app that saves time while bringing everything together.
This was the third consecutive time our beer festival app brought #BrrrFest to life before, during, and after this Iowa beer festival. As you can see below, thousands of people plugged into the BrrrFest app and our exclusive tap handle trophy was earned by yet another new Best of Fest Award winner. Alright, enough chatter! Let’s get to some intoxicating event highlights.
PLANNING A BEER FESTIVAL? LETāS CHAT.
62 breweries, 307 craft beers, and 3,000+ beer lovers emerged from hibernation to enjoy the 2021 Iowa Craft Brew Festival.
We’ve been waiting a looong time for in-person beer festivals to return. This made the 2021 Iowa Craft Brew Festival special. Our beer festival app was in full effect (with a few new features!) and the Best of Fest Award was up for grabs. It was great to catch up with so many friends from all around Iowa, while making a bunch of new ones as well.
The Iowa Brewers Guild has traditionally hosted #ICBF in the heart of downtown Des Moines and while the urban vibe was always cool, this year’s shift to a more spacious, natural environment was well-received. The live music was fun too! Below is our festival summary and a few photos to highlight this triumphant return to brewfests.
PLANNING A BREWFEST? LETāS CHAT.
#BrrrFest was a blast.
We returned to Coralville, Iowa for their 9th annual winter beer festival. Our beer festival app was back in action and easier to manage than ever. Event organizers spent no time herding tigers, yet 100% of the 61 vendors had their BrrFest beer lists looking sharp! This allowed 3,000+ attendees to rate any of the 300 craft beers being poured. In fact, before the doors even opened, 3,323 beers were added to wish lists, which continues to prove our platform builds hype, sells tickets and is appreciated by hop heads planning their own brewfest experience.
Once the doors opened, our team enjoyed sharing stories of our good friend Dan from Firetrucker and celebrating endless good beer with a community of beer lovers and the artists who brew them. Attendees rated more beers than last year’s event and after a tight race that saw beers going up and down the leaderboard, the Iowa Brewers Guild was proud to deliver our Best of Fest Award to Big Grove Brewery. Here’s the milestone moment and a few words from our winners on video, as well as, our full 2020 festival summary and highlight photos. Cheers!
HOSTING A BREWFEST? LET’S CHAT.
We’re proud to announce our partnership with the Iowa Brewers Guild! Together, we’ve unleashed a new extension to our smart flight platform brewed specifically for craft beer events!
Here’s how it all went down. As our beer flight app was being piloted at local restaurants, breweries and bars, our team collaborated with the Iowa Brewers Guild to use our evolving smart flight platform to connect beer-loving attendees with their tasting experience at live events nationwide. Feature ideas have now evolved into reality and we’re thrilled to announce the unveiling of our brand new brewfest app at The 2018 Iowa Craft Brew Festival!
“It’s been such a pleasure collaborating with so many industry allies throughout Iowa and this partnership with the Iowa Brewers Guild is special. Together, we’ve build a fun way for thirsty attendees to enjoy, track, rate and share their favorite beers at this year’s Iowa Craft Brew Festival!” -Ben McDougal
Here are key features attendees will enjoy:
- FULL VENDOR LIST – Attendees can track the booths they’ve visited and navigate to where they want to head next. With 75+ vendors and 350+ craft beers to try, we’ve also included live stats on the percentage of vendors visited and total beers tasted as you make your way through the event.
- BEER DETAILS – Each beer from every vendor is featured with a short description, IBU and ABV. Along with fun details, attendees can check-in on Untappd, add tasting notes, include a personal rating and share their #ICBF experience throughout social media.
- TASTING REPORT – After a long day of tasting so many great beers, we know people will love looking back at all the beers they tried.
Special thanks to J. Wilson, Kelsey Seay and the Bens on our own team. Together, we’ve built something event organizers, vendors and attendees will all appreciate! We look forward to seeing everyone at the Iowa Craft Brew Festival and we hope everyone has fun drinking, tracking, rating and sharing your favorite craft beers. Cheers š»
Trivia nights are fun and have become increasingly popular. Itās an easy event to host in almost any brewery, brewpub, restaurant or bar and adds one more reason for customers to head your way.
We know our electronic beer flight platform provides an enhanced customer experience, but since we enjoyed craft beer trivia at CBC17, weāve added a few new angles to utilize as you bring #SmartFlights online.
Flip The Script
Whether itās a part of a trivia night or not, weāve always been intrigued by the idea of flipping the ordering process. Instead of your serving staff taking the order, why canāt the customer have the option of setting up their smart beer flight? This not only saves time, but what if we used our platform to serve up a twist of fun. After you fulfill the order, imagine the beer flight being delivered with a little trivia game. Instead of highlighting which beer is which, we can now serve the flight with details hidden and then after a few guesses, the correct answers can dynamically appear! You know beer lovers will appreciate the chance to showoff, but at the core, youāre avoiding wasted time of people standing at the bar not knowing what they want, while engaging customers with a little brewtech gamification.
Interactive Tasting Round
Many trivia nights involving craft beer include a tasting round where participants are invited to sample a few beers and then determine which is which. Using smart flights and built during our
CBC17 event at Penn Social, we have a more interactive way to deliver this beer tasting round. Start by determining the beers youāll serve. Letās assume youāre serving four to each person/team. Mark the sample cups with a 1, 2, 3 and 4. Make sure you pour the right beer into its assigned glass, and then deliver them in a random order to the trivia participant. Once received, an interactive beer tasting begins. To submit their answers, each team brings the flight back to the trivia organizer and received points for each beer correctly identified. You could add variances into this, such as styles, types of specific ingredients and more. Itās fun, super easy and offers a chance for customers to learn, rate and share what they like about each item served.
Custom Beer Details
With our online dashboard that allows establishment owners to manage their active beer menu, one sneaky, but especially unique way of using smart flights on trivia night, is to actually hid answers within the details associated with different beers. All beer data automatically loads with accurate details from Untappd as you add new beers on your active menu, but all this information can be edited to include anything you want. Whether thatās a little promotional content or an answer to be found during trivia, we love the idea of a speed round that awards the people who can find the answer hidden, but still easy to find within their smart flights.
Endless Opportunity
With our digital experience, the opportunities are endless, but letās close with a few general thoughts. There are dedicated companies who can provide trivia nights, such as Geeks Who Drink, who makes this even easier to execute, but what have you done to make trivia successful at your establishment? Have you tried anything that didnāt go over well? When do you host trivia nights? We always suggest an early evening event on a slower weekday. We like Tuesdays for the memorable naming effect of calling it āTrivia Tuesdayā, but you know if/how a trivia night will work best.
Engaging gamification paired with big data is a powerful combination and weāve enjoyed exploring how FliteBrite can bring trivia nights to life. Whether itās enhancing your trivia night or another hot idea, our team is here to break barriers and would love to hear how we can continue pushing the limits of your smart beer flight experience. Cheers!
We unleashed #SmartFlights at The 2017 Craft Brewers Conference!
After years of development, it was surreal to officially unveil our company and the future of beer flights at the industry’s largest event of the year. As you may have seen in our CBC17 preview article, this was an important event where we wanted to make a big impact. As you can see in the photos below, we had an awesome booth, enjoyed all sorts of adventure and loved sharing our innovative product with tons of attendees from all over the world. Like we did in our CBC16 recap, let’s take you on a ride through our trip to Washington DC. Hang on…here we go!
Monday
After arriving the night before, our three-person team packed up and rolled into downtown DC. The venue for CBC was once again massive and after checking in, we hauled everything to where we’d call home the next three days. Setup was smooth and our hot little booth looked sweet!
Once setup was done, we found a random spot to grab some beers and do some final prep work. The “remote office” we chose became the destination for everyone from North Carolina, as the NC Beer Happy Hour got underway. We tapped in and meet a bunch of great people, before heading to the night’s big event.
The opening reception at CBC is always epic and this year was no different. We arrived at the Smithsonian’s Natural Museum of American History, where of course, great craft beer was served, but also tons of fun things to experience. After some time there, we strolled out to the middle of the national mall. This was a special moment, as Ben, Sinclair and Jake all enjoyed a few brews and stood in between the Washington Monument and our nation’s capital. From there, we headed to the second location for this fun gathering. Once inside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the night came to life. We had way too much fun closing things down, met some cool cats and captured some epic photos that we’ll enjoy forever.
Tuesday
With very little sleep, it was time to do what we came there to do. Booth 1640 became a little hot spot in the massive expo hall and it was awesome to see so much interest in our new technology. We met all sorts of brewery owners and industry professionals and even plugged our product into a few other booths throughout the event. Thanks again Grandstand, Barth Haas Group, Brewd and Sahm! In short, Day 1 was a great start to our three day adventure in DC!
Wednesday
Day 2 was the best day of CBC17. Our booth buzzed with activity all day long and our after party with Sam Adams and Digital Pour was a hit. As you can see below, one obvious highlight was meeting the crew from Sam Adams. One of the fathers of craft beer, Jim Koch, actually had a chance to play around with our product and had fun snapping some photos with Ben. Penn Social was an awesome host and we even came up with a new way to use our smart paddles within the beer trivia event. Thanks again to our friends (and booth neighbors) at Digital Pour, Penn Social and Sam Adams for such a fun evening.
Once we closed down the party at Penn Social, our crew flew over to catch the end of the Iowa Beer Social. It was awesome to walk into a room full of friends, Ben turned on his electronic shoes and the night got a little out of control from there.
Thursday
The final day of CBC was a struggle. You could tell that all of the 13,000+ attendees were exhausted from such a crazy week and the mood throughout the event felt like zombieland. Nonetheless, we pushed through and generated another day full of new introductions and continued interest in our electronic serving system.
Along with meeting new friends from Beer Advocate, one highlight came right at the end of the show. We had packed up our booth and were walking off the show floor. As we walked past the Brewers Association’s area, Ben stopped to say thanks for all their help. As he randomly walked up to say hello, they were literally in the middle of talking about FliteBrite, with our promo paddle in their hands! The timing of our visit could not have been scripted any better, so Ben took some time to share our story and walked them through the world’s first electronic beer flight paddle.
We crashed back at the house and had a fun evening of reflection. Friday we did a little sight seeing and left DC with a mixture of emotions. Our formal unveiling had gone big at the Craft Brewers Conference, we had a bunch of breweries, restaurants and bars from throughout the country sign up for a free trial, and there was an exciting sense of accomplishment, but we also heard all sort so of valuable feedback and know there’s a lot more work to be done.
CHEERS to CBC17!
We tasted the Brewers Association’s Craft Brewers Conference in Philadelphia last year and we’re proud to share that we’re headed to Washington DC to formally unveil our smart beer flight platform at CBC17!
The simple fact that we’ll be in our nation’s capital for the largest gathering of brewers is awesome, but we’re stepping it up this year and are ready to take orders from nationwide attendees.
To make it easy to secure your own smart beer flight paddles, we’ll be hanging out in one of the hall’s hot spots, Booth 1640. In fact, here’s your first look at the Craft Brewers Conference 2017 Exhibit Hall and where to find FliteBrite on April 10-13, 2017!
You heard it here first.
#SmartFlights are formally being unveiled at #CBC17.
Inside the exhibit hall, we’re literally next door neighbors with our friends from Digital Pour (1636) and just a flight glass away from Grandstand Glassware & Apparel (1837). We can all enjoy two beer stations (red) on each side of our booth and being able to stop by all sorts of other friends in the exhibit hall this April. BREWD (1023) will be in the house, along with other friends like Track Track Malting (654) and Draft Magazine (424)!
Along with your first smart beer flight experience, we’ll be giving away fun swag at Booth 1640. We’ll have our new customer coasters on hand with a new collection of shirts and a few more surprises for the first breweries and restaurants who secure their own fleet of electronic beer flight paddles.
With a fun booth in the heart of DC’s largest exhibit hall, we are ready to deliver, but you know we’re just as excited for the after parties. In fact, we’re excited to announce a special event we’ll be hosting with Digital Pour at Penn Social on Wednesday (4/12) night! More details are on the way, but #SmartFlights will be paired with trivia and a ton of fun. We’re also excited for the annual #IowaBeerSocial, as that’s always a great time to connect with all our Iowa allies!
After CBC16 in Philly last year, the FliteBrite crew can’t wait to reconnect with everyone and we’d invite you to follow our #CBC17 adventures. Take a peek at our matte black beer paddles before the rush of CBC17, then connect with us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. If you’re attending the Craft Brewers Conference in DC, we also invite you to shoot us a note so we can reserve you a time to experience one of the hottest new brewtech products on the show floor.
Cheers to this exciting announcement for our company, the monumental opportunity and all the people who make craft beer so much fun!
