GABF 2011: Sam Adam's LongShot Contest Brunch

One of the best parts of the Great American Beer Festival is the Saturday morning brunch with Sam Adams.  Each year, the brunch is in conjunction with the LongShot Contest.  The LongShot Contest, in short, is a homebrew contest that rewards the winner with a chance to brew the recipe at a distribution level.  The beer is then packaged and sold in the 2012 LongShot six-pack.  Here's the three finalists for the LongShot Competition.  We started the morning with tasting each of the beers and submitting our votes.  Derf's Secret Alt brewed by Joe Formanek was the winner this year.  Congrats to Joe! Round one of the brunch buffet.  Lobster hollandaise, little neck clams, stout ice cream, French toast, and some pumpkin stout.  Again, this is just round one.  Needless to say, I stuffed myself silly at this brunch.  Not only was the food extremely tasty, I thought it was presented in a really creative fashion.  The ice cream container was frozen into a block of ice.  Within that block of ice, there were tiny frozen pumpkins and buds.  A woman sitting close to me said it was a very traditional Swedish way of presenting food, and I thought it was cute (come on, tiny pumpkins?) and creative.  I couldn't help taking multiple photos of the ice.  I'm going to use this the next time I serve something appropriate.  I just need to find tiny pumpkins!  A big thanks to Sam Adams for having us at the LongShot Contest.  It is just about the perfect way to start the final day of the Great American Beer Festival.