The 2025 Craft Brewers Conference arrives in Indianapolis on April 28 and the Brewers Association is deep in preparation for the thousands of industry attendees. The welcome reception will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts, and you can go down on the field and try to kick a field goal. I recently spoke with Ann Obenchain, the BA’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications, about the upcoming event and what the nearly 10,000 visitors can expect at this year’s CBC. 

Andy Crouch: Tell me about why the BA chose Indianapolis and about the beer scene there.

Ann Obenchain: We like to take the Craft Brewers Conference around the country so that it is more accessible to different geographic groups each year. Indiana is centrally located, easy to get to for our Midwest, East Coast, southeast folks, which has a huge concentration of brewers, and it’s affordable. The Indiana Brewers Guild has been great to work with and we’ve never been there, so it’s going to be exciting. The Guild is so excited to host us. They are also hosting brewery tours, which are a fundraiser for the guild. In the Indianapolis metro area, we have about 69 breweries. In Indianapolis proper, there’s 28. So that should keep our folks fairly busy. In the area, there’s also six cideries, and nearly 70 distilleries or people that have the distilling license. So lots to do there.

AC: What’s new at CBC this year?

AO: We are always looking at surveys from our attendees and what they have been interested in. We work with our seminar subcommittee and our events committee on their feedback too. So first and foremost, it’s about what the attendees want to hear and what is top of mind for them. We know that craft beer has been declining and business margins are tight, so running a healthy and successful business is what we’re hearing is top of mind right now…We have more on how to run a business, business skills, business management, and marketing your business. It’s getting tougher and tougher, as we know out there, so we’ve expanded those tracks, as well as continuing to add more information about how to distill. 

We’re also talking about the government affairs track. I think you’ll see we’re going to kind of revise that based on all the things that are happening with tariffs and supply chain. Look for Mark Sorini and the government affairs team to be giving some up to the minute updates on that. 

AC: Tell me about Esther and JC Tetreault of Trillium Brewing who will be giving a joint keynote address this year. 

AO: Well, they’re a package deal (laughs). They’ve been speaking together, which I love. We’ve never had a couple, but we also were attracted to that, because many of our breweries are partner businesses. So this is the first time that we’ve done that. I don’t know if you’ve heard them speak together, but they play off of each other really well. I think it’ll provide some serious and exciting and motivating pieces, but also some humor. Because they’re in it day to day, I think that’ll help them feel real. They have a family. They are running this amazing business. They may or may not agree. A few of our staff have seen them speak together, and thought that that would be a really fun and new component to bring to the conference. 

Attendees are looking to get inspired and we know they’re spending their hard earned dollars to come to CBC. They’re really looking for some tangible sparks that they can apply to their own business

AC: What about exhibitors?

AO: We’re going to have between 550 to 600 exhibitors. So I believe that’s a little bit down from last year, and some of that is just based on space availability, but the exhibitors are excited. We’re excited to have them all.

AC: Can you tell me about the commemorative beer for CBC?

AO: We are just about to put it out there. The Indiana Brewers Guild has been involved and it’ll be a little bit different. The beer will be available for pickup at different breweries. So we’ll be encouraging you to go out to these breweries after the conference and try the commemorative beer. It’ll also be on tap at the BA booth, so a little bit different model there. 

The beer is called Brewers of the Corn and is an Indiana Brewers Guild collaborative lager brewed with heirloom Edelweiss 2-Row Barley and locally grown, malted Indiana corn from Sugar Creek Malt Company. The description is “Showcasing sweet corn and biscuit malt character, it finishes dry with a touch of light oak from a quick spin in spent whiskey barrels.” It is 5.5-percent ABV and 12 IBU.

AC: Any last final pitch for people on the fence about attending?

AO: My last pitch is, we know it’s really hard out there and very uncertain, and we know every dollar counts. There’s nothing like being with your brewing community and learning that you’re not alone and maybe getting some new ideas to come back refreshed. Sometimes in uncertain times, it’s great to step away for a minute and go be with your beer family and learn and get reinspired. We don’t take those dollars for granted, but we really hope that everyone will come to CBC. 

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This article originally appeared on ProBrewer.com in April 2025. All About Beer’s parent company has a partnership with ProBrewer.com to create original content for that website. New articles appear each week and subsequently are reposted on AllAboutBeer.com.