Lots of walking
I am from an area where it snows and is cold for 6-8 months out of the year. I’m not even kidding when I say that. We had snow in Buffalo on Friday that we started our trek down to CBC. It was cold enough that I didn’t even consider bringing shorts (thank god for Target). So, I was completely not in shape for all of the walking that I did. I got back to my hotel and my feet and ankles were killing me.
I ran into a TON of people that I wasn’t expecting to see. Instagram friends, other brewers, and even local breweries. One of the guys from Big Ditch said that he had his Fitbit on and he was way over his normal steps for the day. I wish I’d had something like that to see how much I’d walked.
A few words of warning for those wanting to attend CBC18 — walk a lot before you come. It’s a ton of walking even if you just walk the BrewExpo floor. I only saw about half of the booths yesterday and I spent 4+ hours walking around. Another word of warning is #hydrate. I did not hydrate enough on the LoCo tour and I spent most of that night and the next morning recovering. There is a TON of stuff to see and do and even more to drink at CBC and around it, so please stay safe (thanks, Uber and Lyft) and hydrate.
2oz pours & Hospitalities sections
As I mentioned above, I was a little dehydrated and tired from the day before (thanks, Kellie and the Visit Loudoun folks) so I was happy to find the hospitalities sections. What I didn’t expect was a number of unique beers that each one of them had. One of the sections yesterday had some Lawson’s Finest beers (very hard for a Buffalo boy to come across).
I really found myself enjoying these sections. They were each sponsored by a company and that company brought in beers that either used some of their products (White Labs had beers made with their yeast strains). Others had beers from their area (Virginia and North Carolina obviously had beers from their states), but I thought that Cincinnati Insurance Companies had a really nice booth with lots of Ohio beers.
