The $3.41 Challenge - Lobuck

[Passload]

What is BMC ?

Bud, Miller, Coors

 

[the_bird]

I'm not sure whether I'm in or not, but I had what I think is an absolutely brilliant inspiration this morning. I know I personally was thinking about this in entirely incorrect terms. Hell, I'm in!

One rules suggestion; I would allow freshops.com and hopsdirect.com, along with Austinhomebrew and the others, as appropriate pricing souces for hops.

 

[jezter6]

bird - I'm in agreement. I don't know about some of the other sites, but looking around morebeer, I couldn't find hops by the pound. In my calculation I used freshops as my calculator.

The good thing is their prices are real easy - common hops are .75/oz, import/rarer hops are .85/oz. Makes things good and quick to compute.

 

[Pirate Ale]

Oh i am so in..

But one question...does Apfelwine count? Or are we strictly doing beer?

 

[jezter6]

I think, in the spirit of doing a cheap, drinkable, BMC type of brew this will be restricted to BEER flavored drinks only.

This would probably not include apfrelwine or clear malt fizzies.

Not to mention - 5 gal of 100% apple juice will end up being about $12-15 (using peapod as the source for grocery adjuncts) for 5 gallons, putting it way too expensive for use in such a contest.

 

[the_bird]

Does it *need* to be BMC-like (pale, yellow water)?

'Cause a little bit of black patent and some roasted barley will cover up a lot of imperfections. Porters used to be made with all kinds of cheap adjuncts, too.

 

[jezter6]

I think ANY beer qualifies. This isn't a style competition where we're judging color, mouthfeel and such to the style of a crappy light american lager. This is a taste only thing. The only requirement is that it's beer and not another alcohol.

Any color of beer is fine, it's just the more specialty grains you use, the more it costs per gallon. Although the rules aren't finalized, I think that if you spend the extra 10c/gallon to make it taste better, you're more likely to win against someone who has the lowest cost recipe that tastes like pee in a bottle.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

I think ANY beer qualifies. This isn't a style competition where we're judging color, mouthfeel and such to the style of a crappy light american lager. This is a taste only thing. The only requirement is that it's beer and not another alcohol.

Any color of beer is fine, it's just the more specialty grains you use, the more it costs per gallon. Although the rules aren't finalized, I think that if you spend the extra 10c/gallon to make it taste better, you're more likely to win against someone who has the lowest cost recipe that tastes like pee in a bottle.

Yes. This is mostly a price competition during the brewing process, but after that, it's a taste competition. The goal is definitely to make something tasty and delicious.

 

[Orfy]

What about partial mashers.
A third price target?

I was thinking of mashing a couple of old socks to see if the had annything to the flavour!

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

April 1 would be a great dedline for this kind of funny competition.

For all the reasons you mentioned, I agree completely. April 1 is an awesome day to hold this competition!!!

One rules suggestion; I would allow freshops.com and hopsdirect.com, along with Austinhomebrew and the others, as appropriate pricing souces for hops.

I MAY add those as sources, however, someone suggested restricting this entire competition down to a SINGLE online vendor for pricing. The reason being to drive more internet traffic to his site and get people accustomed to using his website. In exchange, maybe get them to supply a gift certificate for the winner or maybe offer the winning recipe as a supercheap kit.

What do you guys think of that? I know it's better to have more sources to look through, but if the tradeoff was the ability to get some prizes, would that be worth it? I'm thinking this would not change the availability of ingredients- if the sponsor didn't have what you were looking for, you could use other sources... it'd still tend to drive traffic over to their shop.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

What about partial mashers.
A third price target?

I was thinking of mashing a couple of old socks to see if the had annything to the flavour!

A most excellent idea with the socks, but I am not sure of the best way to include partial mashers. What does everyone else think of that? Rule suggestions? Or is it too complicated?

 

[Orfy]

My $1.34 recipe was all from morebeer.com They have Bulk and individual pricing.

But although I'm taking interest in this and may do a small batch of my beer, I can't take part.
I will probably brew the winning recipes.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

I read a thread about harvesting yeast from chimay. To encourage low-cost brewing and inventive techniques, I am proposing the following rule:

Yeast must be priced as stated previously (one-third the cost of the yeast from an online supplier). However, if you harvest the yeast from a bottle of beer, you do NOT have to include the cost of the beer in your price calculation. The yeast will be considered "free".

 

[Orfy]

Yeast must be priced as stated previously (one-third the cost of the yeast from an online supplier). However, if you harvest the yeast from a bottle of beer, you do NOT have to include the cost of the beer in your price calculation.

Technique and pictures to be supplied?

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

Technique and pictures to be supplied?

Yes. Good thought. Since this is a recipe competition, your techniquies MUST be explained in detail, with pictures to enable others to copy your recipe.

 

[the_bird]

A most excellent idea with the socks, but I am not sure of the best way to include partial mashers. What does everyone else think of that? Rule suggestions? Or is it too complicated?

Well, I was thinking of partial mashing - was thinking of including a modest amount of Munich for some additional flavor (covering up the lack of malt), but not wanting to have to buy Munich extract. But then, what qualifies as a partial mash? If I do a batch that's 90% AG and a half-pound of LME, is that a partial mash? That's substantially different, cost-wise, from just doing 10% Munich, 10% 2-row.

Oi, it's so complicated....

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

Thinking about the partial mashers...

For extract brewers, how about a "No Sparge Rule" and a "No strike water" rule.

In other words, you can't add water to grain (you must add the grain to the water), and you can't sparge it... meaning you can't use the filter bed to create hot liquor.


Two questions:
Is that restrictive enough to really prohibit all grain practices?
Will these recipes developed under the above rule be simple enough for most extract brewers to follow the recipe?

 

[the_bird]

Eh....

If you can't sparge, that goes against the underlying concept, which is what is the cheapest way of creating a drinkable beer. Not allowing PMers to sparge, artificially constaining their efficiency, goes completely against that.

I'll prolly go the AG route, anyway.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

I read a thread about harvesting yeast from chimay. To encourage low-cost brewing and inventive techniques, I am proposing the following rule:

Yeast must be priced as stated previously (one-third the cost of the yeast from an online supplier). However, if you harvest the yeast from a bottle of beer, you do NOT have to include the cost of the beer in your price calculation. The yeast will be considered "free".

Here's my draft proposal:

Yeast must be priced as stated previously (one-third the cost of the yeast from an online supplier). However, if you harvest the yeast from a bottle of beer, the yeast will be considered FREE, provided you sign a sworn affidavit stating that part of your purpose in purchasing the beer was to drink the beer and that you did, in fact, do so. You must further state that you did not pour any of that beer into your own recipe, nor did you purchase the beer strictly for the purpose of stealing the free yeast.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

Eh....

If you can't sparge, that goes against the underlying concept, which is what is the cheapest way of creating a drinkable beer. Not allowing PMers to sparge, artificially constaining their efficiency, goes completely against that.

I'll prolly go the AG route, anyway.

We all know that the cheapest way to get a drinkable beer is with AG. So go that route if it pleases you.

I expect AG'ers to get really inventive with their techniques. I expect Extracters to be respectful in the use of their additional spending limit. Sure, I want to allow all types of steeping, but nothing that can't be done with a basic beer brewing kit or common household items for the extract brewers.


The real reason I want to prohibit PMing is that it is in a bit of a limbo- it's too complex for most beginning brewers, and it's not good for all-grainers. So I won't say "No PMing", but my initial gut reaction is to throw a PMed brew up against the all-grainers.

 

[jezter6]

Recommendations:
PM is graded as an All Grain. If you wanted to do an all grain beer, you should have. If you wasted your precious resources ($) on higher price per qty extract, shame on you and your price will reflect that.
Extract is 100% extract/adjunct sugar with no sparging or grain bed.
Yeast, I'd leave as is. No need to futher convolute the contest with special rules for harvesting yeast from a bottle. It's still a 'cost' you incurred to get the yeast, and since a single bottle from a beer shop is (roughly) the cost of a yeast pack, or likely more than a yeast pack, it's cost is associated as normal. Since come people can buy beer cheaper, and bottles are not part of the online retailer(s) specified, I think that we should not include anything special. If you want to harvest free yeast, so be it, but you still gotta pay for it.

Alternatively, since yeast is pretty constant in price, only depending on what form you get it in, maybe we should just put a standard yeast cost for each form (dry, liquid, smack pack) and call it a day.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

I agree 100% on the Partial Mash.

About yeast though... I'm seeing it both ways. On the one hand, this contest is about cheap beer. Buying a beer to harvest yeast is not cost-effective. On the other hand, it is a "free" ingredient if you actually drank the beer. On the third hand though, the yeast is similar to that which you can purchase commercially and allowing someone to use something for free which is substantially similar to what others will have to pay for may substantially impair the fairness of the competition. And then there's the fourth hand, and that REALLY makes this a freak of nature.


Ok. So the yeast harvest rule is out. You can harvest if you want, but you calculate the cost of the most similar yeast from regular internet sources.

 

[olllllo]

I've been casually following this and I have some thoughts.
What Toot and some of the other posters here are doing is admirable. There is alot of thought and work going into this.

I realize that this is just a sounding board for the contest/collaboration, but it would be helpful if Toot posted the agreed upon rules (or mostly agreed) in the original post so they can be understood (or debated) without having to re-read the entire thread.

Here's what I'm not clear about:
Bulk Pricing- Shouldn't that apply to everyone or no one? I can buy bulk DME or LME just as the AG can buy grain.
Shipping on ingredients? Even if the best price is at Northern, shipping can break the deal.

Batch Size- My assumption is that most extract make 5 gal batches and AG 10. Why not agree upon that. Last I saw was 25 gallon batches.

At the end of the day, isn't the goal to have 2 or 3 tasty yet inexpensive recipies for AG or Extract Brewers?

Edit: Propane has a cost but stovetop cooking doesn't? I'm extract, but I use propane. I really think that this should be about ingredients, otherwise desertbrew and I will build solar stills and use agave as fermenatbles.

It just looks like there are going to be an A** LOAD of rules.

Here's my quick and dirty solution. It will take a great deal of trust and maturity about things, but I know this group is capable of it.


There will be a 3 component challenge with perhaps 3 categories Extract, AG, PM.
Challenge 1. Taste test
Everyone makes what they think is the cheapest beer they can make and document it. There will be a minimum set of rules. Judges will rate the best beers in each class.

Challenge 2. Cost
The documented recipies and techniques will be posted along with the costs that the recipe creator came up with (trust). You could even create a survey thread for each and people could vote/debate as to whether the recipe and technique is reasonable and sound. Those that can back up thier facts will probably do better.

Challenge 3. Replication
The recipes that rise to the top will be replicated by people to see if in fact the costs are in line and the techniques can be replicated.

Whaddya think?

 

[jezter6]

I agree we should try to get rules lite as best possible. However, I do like sliding scale of points based on cost, abv, etc.

I am worried about Toot's latest statement about writing out techniques and pictures...all of that should be remotely optional for those that want to do it, but requiring picture taking as part of the competition makes it more difficult for people to enter, which is the opposite of the goal (get as many entries as possible).

Hopefully Toot can work with one (or two or three) of the online vendors to get some prizes worked out, and that would help solidify my request for a single price point for all ingredients.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

I've been casually following this and I have some thoughts.
What Toot and some of the other posters here are doing is admirable. There is alot of thought and work going into this.

I realize that this is just a sounding board for the contest/collaboration, but it would be helpful if Toot posted the agreed upon rules (or mostly agreed) in the original post so they can be understood (or debated) without having to re-read the entire thread.

Here's what I'm not clear about:
Bulk Pricing- Shouldn't that apply to everyone or no one? I can buy bulk DME or LME just as the AG can buy grain.
Shipping on ingredients? Even if the best price is at Northern, shipping can break the deal.

My assumption is that people will acquire most of the ingredients locally or through their mail-order place of choice. I am NOT telling people where to buy, only telling them how to calculate the price of the ingredients for the purpose of this competition. Including shipping would be a huge disadvantage for some people and it doesn't make sense to include it in the competition. Does this make the competition a little bit unrealistic? Yes. Definitely. But does it retain the spirit of what we are trying to do? I believe it does, so I'm letting it slide and just saying, "Good enough".

Batch Size- My assumption is that most extract make 5 gal batches and AG 10. Why not agree upon that. Last I saw was 25 gallon batches.

I don't want to agree on that because buying ingredients for a 5 gallon batch is EXPENSIVE. I agreed that assuming bulk grains for AG brewers makes sense because the prices of those grains are commonly available and active brewers may actually buy in bulk. However, for extract brewers, there are fewer options. If I want to you Munton&Fison, it comes in two sizes. That's it. So, by assuming a large batch, it allows people to buy the bigger can. And yes, there's also "bulk LME/DME" It seems that 25lbs will get you that pricing. So my thinking was that if Extract brewers assume a 25 gallon batch, they will get that pricing (if they choose to use no-name ingredients), but it won't be as unrealistic as assuming that an Extract Brewer is going to buy a 55 gallon drum because, let's be honest here, nobody really buys that much extract at one time for homebrewing.

Basically, I'm just trying to strike a balance between best pricing and quantities that a home brewer might actually consider buying.

At the end of the day, isn't the goal to have 2 or 3 tasty yet inexpensive recipies for AG or Extract Brewers?

It just looks like there are going to be an A** LOAD of rules.

Yes. Unfortunately, when you sit down and really start to think it all through, suddenly, you discover that you need a lot of rules. This isn't an attempt to make things complicated. It just becomes necessary when you get into the nitty-gritty of how the competition will work. Everybody here is thinking to themselves: "How can I get a better beer for the price?" When I was asked about partial mashing, that was such an attempt. And that's totally cool. That's what this competition is about. However, if I don't create some sort of rule about partial mashing, then we all know who the winners and losers of the competition are going to be. In other words, there needs to be a level playing field and that requires rules.

Here's my quick and dirty solution. It will take a great deal of trust and maturity about things, but I know this group is capable of it.

There will be a 3 component challenge with perhaps 3 categories Extract, AG, PM.
Challenge 1. Taste test
Everyone makes what they think is the cheapest beer they can make and document it. There will be a minimum set of rules. Judges will rate the best beers in each class.

The idea between the different price points is that all the beers can be compared against each other. If there are enough entries, we will DEFINITELY divide things up into categories, but it would seem rather silly to do it if there were only 5 entries. I want people to focus on winning the entire competition, not just a class. And, later, if the number of entries justify it, we can break everyone out into classes and I can't imagine that would draw any complaints from anyone.

Challenge 2. Cost
The documented recipies and techniques will be posted along with the costs that the recipe creator came up with (trust). You could even create a survey thread for each and people could vote/debate as to whether the recipe and technique is reasonable and sound. Those that can back up thier facts will probably do better.

Recipes will be posted and made public after the tasting date. While collaboration is a good thing, we want to encourage creativity for the contest. Collaboration will certainly occur after the competition, but until then, we want to minimize idea theft.

And ingredient prices vary widely depending on where you are in the country.. or the world. The goal with internet pricing is to ensure a level playing field regardless of location because, as you said, the goal isn't to brew cheap beer, but to develop a couple of good recipes. That means that, even if you must pay $3 for a pound of DME, this will still be a relatively cheap, and good, recipe. So I definitely want to go with an agreed-upon pricing method that doesn't allow for debate after-the-fact.

Challenge 3. Replication
The recipes that rise to the top will be replicated by people to see if in fact the costs are in line and the techniques can be replicated.

Whaddya think?

I have been thinking about a replication stage. If this is just a fun and friendly competition, then I don't care. But if there is going to be a prize involved (such as a gift certificate), or if this is going to be opened up to other brewers, then I agree that it is necessary to have some recipe verification. Recipes, and the opportunity to brew a sample batch, will occur before the prize is awarded.

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

I agree we should try to get rules lite as best possible. However, I do like sliding scale of points based on cost, abv, etc.

I am worried about Toot's latest statement about writing out techniques and pictures...all of that should be remotely optional for those that want to do it, but requiring picture taking as part of the competition makes it more difficult for people to enter, which is the opposite of the goal (get as many entries as possible).

Hopefully Toot can work with one (or two or three) of the online vendors to get some prizes worked out, and that would help solidify my request for a single price point for all ingredients.

I am scrapping the pictures thing. That was only going to be for the yeast harvesting. Deep down, the reason I think I wanted that is because I wanted to get some good details about how the process was done. Deep down, I think it was a selfish motivation on my part. So, when I thought more about it, I decided it really wasn't fair and would add more work than it was worth, so I decided to scrap the idea.

I would, however, ask that each entrant provide a couple of pictures of WHATEVER. I would like to use them when I publish* the final results.


*and by "publish", I mean that I would post them on HBT or on a separate website that I could link to. I might also consider submitting them to a brewing publication if they were interested in the contest

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

Who's in charge here? I want to PM the site owner to make sure that I'm not stepping on any toes or screwing any site sponsors here. I intend to contact MB, then NB, then AHB to see what they might be willing to contribute. I just want to make sure I don't wind up "advertising for the enemy" or anything like that.


Also, do we have any web designers here? I wouldn't mind opening this up as an open competition beyond the confines of HBT. I would certainly be more than willing to compile all the content stated above (rules, reviews of beers, recipes, etc) in digital format. If someone else is willing to put up a site, that'd be great. I know that for some people (like me), that's a HUGE request, but for other people, they can knock something out in a couple of hours of downtime. So I just thought I'd ask...

 

[the_bird]

TxBrew's the admin. I doubt he'll have a problem with this.

What I would do? Sit back with all this feedback, and draw up the rules as you see fit. Let people keep making comments and suggestions. Then, start up a new thread next week with all the rules. You tell us what the rules are, we enter or we don't (I'm leaning against it, now). At this point, it's very confusing.

 

[Pedro-]

This is snowballing pretty fast.

I agree with continuing this thread shortly for rule discussion and adoption, and soon draft a copy of the rules to discuss (as it were to be published) and then starting a new thread or as you said the website.

Another suggestion: Why don't you let some of the owners of the popular podcasts know about the contest and see if they could throw a quick plug in about it? This could easily turn into a large and fruitful contest, not to mention good publicity for this forum. Something to consider, this could get pretty large pretty quick, and you may end up needing some local BJCP judges to be fair (and accurate) on the tasting realm. I might not go completely on the BJCP set of standards, a recipe may not be a perfect american pils but be an amazing beer that most might like to replicate.

The results could be on a large curve, something could taste amazing (as much as this kind of recipe could) but be very expensive. This doesn't mean it should be casted out completely. A chart should eventually be published with all the results, with the winner of course meeting in the middle of best taste and less cost.

You might also like to take a look at minor selections (especially if you decide to eventually submit this for publishing in a large brew publication) such as best taste that's easiest for the beginner (kit like or close enough to it). As was mentioned before this would be where technique would come out, if someone is doing step mashing or infusion mashing for a partial or different techniques it may be a fairly simple looking recipe but a beginner would not know what the heck they were doing.

I'm sure most of the HB stores would pitch something in or at least help in some way, and if this turns large enough for actual judges and a set contest date a reg fee wouldn't be a bad idea to make things easier for the organizer and the entrants alike.

Set a good mission for the contest most of all, it will keep you aligned and back you up in the long run. A nice one liner. What exactly do you intend to accomplish?

in the end just remember what this was about when you started and don't let the ranting get to you. nothing's personal, and if it comes out that way remember it's their prob not yours so far sounds like you and everyone on this great forum are doing a good job getting the ideas together for this. bravo on the idea

just my .02

Cheers!

 

[Sir Humpsalot]

Thanks, drouillp. You're right about needing a mission statement. It's more than a sentence, but here's what I think it is...

The goal of this contest is to motivate creative brewers to develop recipes which result in the best possible beer for the lowest possible price using ingredients commonly available to the homebrewer.