Eagle Creek Brewing Company gained insight to new technology and trends in the brewing industry at the Washington D.C. Craft Brew Conference this week.

Eagle Creek sent Cole Brown, senior communication arts major and Eagle Creek Brewing Company head brewer, to the week-long conference and trade-show where craft brew professionals and industries showcased new ideas and technology in the production brewing business.

“We were able to attend demonstrations on brewing equipment, listen to lectures on brewing maintenance and quality control and drink a lot of beer,” Brown said.

The long-term goal of the company is to not only be open by summer, but to become the first major brewery and packaging distributor in the Southeast.

“There’s a brewery starting up in Savannah, but with the way things are sounding we might start production first,” Brown said.

Any beginning head brewer needs this immersion into the brewing world as the responsibilities include recipe development, monitoring assistant brewers and scheduling brewing batches, Brown said.

Eagle Creek paid to send Brown out there to let him see how Eagle Creek will operate.

Many manufacturing companies installed models of brewing equipment for the brewers to interact with. The company that is manufacturing the stainless steel parts for Eagle Creek Brewing Company set up a model at the conference, Brown said.

“We were able to climb around on the example to get a feel for the equipment we will have at Eagle Creek,” Brown said.

Eagle Creek will first produce a pale ale, but they plan to start offering brews by Brown once they are running efficiently, Daniel Long, owner of Eagle Creek Brewing Company said.

The company wants to produce beers that are commercially unavailable. To market this beer Eagle Creek is forming a business and sales team to work with distributors, Long said.