That's a different problem - since CDI 1.1 it's not possible to call BeanManager.getReference() before the AfterDeploymentValidation event is fired . See also 11.3. The BeanManager object. The reason is that using this method before this specific event might result in unpredictable/wrong behaviour due to the set of beans is not final yet. This was not forbidden in CDI 1.0 (AS7).