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Boomer

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Okay, let's see if there's any interest in this. I'd like to see 10 folks enter it; but, I bet we could make it work with less than that. I'll cap it at 10, however, to keep shipping costs reasonable.

I've shamelessly lifted the below from the excellent @dryboroughbrewing who shamelessly lifted it from the excellent @Auger who allegedly did a fantastic job organizing the 2017 Twelve Beers of Christmas exchange.

I haven't seen anything like this on here anywhere else, so I'll volunteer to run it for the initial run and see where that gets me. If another one exists, I hope its organizer will forgive me for what can only be described as 100% ignorant plagiarism.

Here's the general concept:
Each person who enters will submit a style of beer and two random ingredients. They will be submitted to me via direct message so all styles and ingredients remain a mystery. If there are any duplicates, I will let the submitter know so he/she can submit an alternative style or ingredient. Keep in mind - this is an iron brewer challenge so things like oak chips and coffee beans, while acceptable, might not make it quite as fun as things like donuts and pickles. Also keep in mind, if it's something that just wouldn't make a good beer, please don't submit it. While I happen to love anchovies, I'm not sure I want to brew with them.

Once the period for submissions is closed, I'll throw all of the styles and ingredients into a randomizer. I'll also throw all of the entrants into a randomizer to give you your pick number. Like the other trade events, I'll list the styles with their associated ingredients several days prior to the pick. We'll start the picks and each person will be able to select one of the styles that has been paired with two ingredients. Having two ingredients will give each person the option to use one ingredient, the other ingredient, or both. You certainly don't have to use both of the key ingredients you end up with. This is to make it a little easier to develop a beer based on what ingredients you end up with. However, if you ended up with something like pretzels and mustard, you might be inclined to use both in your brew.

There will be adequate time for each person to brew and bottle his/her beer prior to sending them out. At that point, each brewer sends out three 12oz bottles of their beer to the other brewers and receives 3 bottles of each recipe in return. Maybe you drink one, share one, and age the third!?

Shipping:
It will cost you some money to send out this many packages! Getting involved in this project means you'll eventually need to wrap up several packages with 3 beers each, and mail them potentially all the way across the country from where you live. You may be looking at about $140 in shipping give or take (@dryboroughbrewing thinks for 2017, with him being on the east coast, the total was approximately 130 bucks for the 9 packages they ended up having to ship. So, keep that in mind.)

With this in mind, it has been historically a necessity to require that all brewers will need to be located inside the continental U.S.

If you can accept packages at a business address, that will save your fellow brewers some money. (For some reason, the big shippers charge less to deliver to a business address...) Speaking of the big shippers, generally if you show up at UPS or FedEx with a well packed, sealed box, they don't ask questions. Legally you aren't allowed to ship alcohol via USPS, but in prior years some participants have shipped using Flat Rate boxes from the post office, and haven't had any issues, but this is by no means an endorsement of such an action.

For reference: In 2012, @biochemedic posted some (admittedly perhaps overkill) instructions for packaging a 12 oz longneck for shipping, and also a post with some common box sizes that work well for shipping 3 wrapped/bagged longnecks.

Choosing What You Want to Brew:
Reply to this thread if you're interested and when the time comes, you'll be assigned a number that represents your order in the selection process. When the 'draft' starts, you'll simply wait your turn and then select one of the remaining style/ingredients pairs. If you won't be available during the draft, you can send me a list and I'll pick for you based on your preferences.

How to not be a d*u$cheb@g:
As much as it pains me to post this part, the simple fact is that, every single year this project has been run, there has been at least one brewer who has simply up and vanished, and at times has been shipped homebrew in good faith before their disappearance has become apparent.

Based on this, I wish to request that all participants be either relatively established HBT members (more than a year since joining) *or* be a paid (Supporting or Lifetime) member.

Communicate! If for some reason you have to back out, own up to it ASAP, and hopefully allow a replacement brewer to step in.

Scoring:
I'll be developing a score card (read: googling to find one) that will be used. You will not be able to score your own beer, only the others that you'll be trying. Score sheets will be sent to me and I'll compile the scores and announce the winner, runner up, and third place within a few days of receiving all of the scores.

Prize:
I'll request that each person, along with the home brew that they've made for the contest, please send a commercial beer with the package that is sent to me. Once scores are compiled and posted, I will send all of those commercial beers to the winner. Feel free to include glassware, swag, etc.

The timeline is as follows:
April 20th - Registration deadline - simply reply to this thread & let me know you'd like to join.
April 27th - Submissions due
April 28th - List is posted
May 5th - Draft at noon mountain time.
July 6th - All packages must be mailed and tracking information shared.
July 20th - Scores must be turned in
July 21st - Winner announced

Disclaimer:
I have never run anything like this before. If there are any questions, comments, concerns, etc., please share them with me in a private message and I'll update the contest accordingly. Most of all, let's try to have a good time with it!
 
Sweet!

And it’s completely negotiable, too. If people feel like the timeline needs to be a bit longer/shorter, or done on different dates, that’s 100% fine.

We’ve got a week and a half left so hopefully a few more folks will decide to do it.
 
Love the idea, I don't think I can swing it since it's construction season but subbing to follow the fun.
 
Reminds me of "Forged in Fire" on the History Channel. "Bladesmiths...your task is to create a knife out of.....THIS!" and then they unveil the material: a cannon, an automotive leaf spring, or whatever. They're given a lemon, then must figure out how to make lemonade.

************

I'll keep an eye on this....but I have to tell you, this has no attraction to me at all. I suspect the reason for the slow response is similar to mine. I get to pick a style, using a couple of unique ingredients....which may or may not turn out....then I have to incur significant costs to ship them out.....

And I won't have control over what I have to use?

I'll watch and see how it goes, but I would find it much more rewarding to try a new recipe that sounded good to me, and looked like something I wanted to drink.

I've tried a lot of "weird" beers in my time: BBQ beer, smoke beer, coconut beer......all kinds of things. Never once have I wanted to have a second one.

Anyway, good luck with this.
 
This sounds cool. Local breweries around here just did something like this. You'd think most would have been nasty, but I liked several of them. Here's a link (scroll down a little to see the ingredients list). They randomly picked from this list, style of brew was up to them. Can't remember which one won this year, but a lot of surprisingly good beers.

http://tampabeerworks.com/tampa-bay-beer-week-2018-ultimate-brewer-tres-challenge/

I may be interested in doing this but need to mull over the financial commitment first. I'll keep watching to see what kind of momentum this gets. [emoji16]
 
And we can change it to where each person is assigned two ingredients and then picks the style of beer. Like I said, this is a shot in the dark so we can change it up however you'd like to keep it fun.
 
sorry to resurrect an old thread...
I think this is a great idea! A couple modifications I’d propose for next year. I’d love to participate if the size of the brew needed isn’t too big...
I switched to extract brewing 1 gallon batches recently, but could do up to two 1.5 gallon batches if needed to satisfy the requirement (and will likely switch to BIAB soon). I also bottle condition in 16 oz PET bottles. They’re easier to ship, but may conflict with the 12 oz requirement.


I propose that the ingredient be the same one secret ingredient for all entrants with no specific style required. This is true to the original iron chef tv show premise and I’ve seen iron brewer competitions run like this for local homebrew clubs.
You could have the competitors submit their ideas for the secret ingredient then create a poll for the HBT community...just an idea.
Scoring criteria will likely be different than typical beer competitions and that is a good thing to establish prior to opening up the competition for entry. One key difference I’ve seen is that if there’s no detectable theme ingredient then that’s an automatic disqualification. Maybe 10 points for overall flavor, 5 for appearance and 5 for originality.
 
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