Beer Me In, Scotty

July 21, 2014, by Crafty Pint

Beer Me In, Scotty

Technology has been used to enhance beer tastings in Australia before. Venues such as The Local Taphouse St Kilda have beamed in brewers and experts via Skype or other means to take part in their appreciation sessions from wherever they are in the world. But now a Sydney bottle shop is planning to take things a step further and beam a brewer into the homes of anyone around the country wishing to take part.

Beer Cartel has long been at the forefront of using technology smartly on its award-winning website and now plans to use the site to run beer appreciation / meet the brewer sessions that anyone can attend without leaving the comfort of their armchair. The first of their Sofa Sessions will feature David Padden from Riverside Brewery (pictured above), who will be filmed at Flat Rock Brew Cafe – where there will be a live audience – discussing his brewery and the four beers being showcased on the evening, with the video streamed live over the Beer Cartel website. Those wishing to play along at home just need to order a mixed pack of said beers from the bottleshop, which will arrive on their doorstep in time for the event.

We posted a listing for the event a couple of weeks ago but figured we should find out a little bit more about what the guys at Beer Cartel hope to achieve with this new concept so posed a few questions to one of the store’s owners, Geoff Huens.

Where did the idea come from?
Geoff: A couple of years ago I was on a beach in Fiji thinking of ways we could do things differently with our tastings utilising technology. The idea of ‘Skyping’ in brewers who were in situ in their breweries to an audience sitting in our tasting room came to mind. However, within a week of being back, The Local Taphouse in Sydney announced their first Ale Star Skype session with Garrett Oliver from Brooklyn Brewery!

Fast forward a couple of years and the initial idea had stuck with both Richard and I. Building on this, Richard suggested instead of ‘Skyping’ brewers in, why don’t we ‘Skype’ them out to peoples' homes and mail them out beer packs prior to the event using our existing relationship with Australia Post. We then went about approaching Riverside and Flat Rock to see if they would be interested in being part of the first Sofa Sessions Tasting event.

Has it been done before elsewhere?
As far as we can tell this is the first time in the world this format has been done, i.e. a live in-venue and in-home online beer tasting run concurrently with beers sent out prior to the in-home audience, encouraging those at home to host friends for the event to make it more social. The format will also be very interactive for participants and we will be recording it too so that anyone can then view it afterwards.

How interactive will the sessions be?
In a nutshell: very interactive! During the event the platform will not only allow us to broadcast live audio and video but it also comes with the following functionality:

  • Q&A board for the home audience – they will be able to type questions that we can ask Dave live during the event.
  • Voting polls during the event, e.g. how they rated each of the beers they are tasting or ask them what they thought of the overall event

Further to this we will be:

  • Encouraging attendees to ask questions via Twitter – this can be from either the live audience or the in-home audience
  • Encouraging attendees to send photos via Twitter or post them to our Facebook page. For those hosting a few friends on the night at their house and participating in the event we’ll have a prize to give away which they can enter simply by tweeting us a photo on the night of the group enjoying the beers.
  • We will have a roaming microphone allowing the live audience to ask Dave questions which will also be broadcast live.

Flat-Rock-Brew-Cafe-1

Home from home for the Sofa Sessions

Do you think people will set up their own groups at their homes?
Yes, we’ve already had people buy a couple of packs to be delivered to the same location indicating that there are multiple people heading to the one person’s home to participate. Also, initial chatter on social media has also indicated people will be getting together to make a night of it, which is great as craft beer is better when shared with like minded people.

If it goes well how often do you plan to do them?
After this event we have another one already in the works for Sydney Craft Beer Week with an innovative international brewer. Once the SCBW team have listed the events online (July 28), tickets for this will be available – we’ll keep the brewer under wraps for now!

Once these two are done we’d be looking to make it a regular thing, with the main consideration being lead times to ensure we can get beers out to people before the event, so it’d probably run every two months.

The first Sofa Session kicks off at 7pm on August 19. Anyone wishing to take part can order packs of beer for $25 via the Beer Cartel website here, where they’ll also find details of what technology is required – essentially a working computer with internet connection and sound should get you where you need to be. There are tickets available for anyone wanting to attend the event at Flat Rock Brew Cafe too.

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