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.

GABF 2010 #6 - Sam Adam's Longshot and Barrel Aged Goodness

Samuel Adams Boston Lager started in the kitchen of Jim Koch some 26 years ago.  Today it is the largest American owned brewery, and though their reach spans far and wide, not all of their products are available everywhere.  At the Sam Adam's media brunch, I had the opportunity to taste three oak barrel aged beers that aren't available yet in Texas.  My favorite was the American Kriek.  The American Kriek was tart, smelled sweet, and wonderfully bright.  Hope this one comes to Texas soon. All photos by John Knox.

In addition to a brunch of foods cooked with beer, we also participated in the Samuel Adams LongShot American Homebrew Contest voting.  The beers were brewed by Samuel Adams employees, all of which were women.  This beer (along with two other homebrew winning entries) will be brewed, bottled, and distributed nationally in the 2011 Long Shot Category 23 Variety 6-pack.  The category 23 is a group of beers that don't fit into the other 22 different categories of beer. 

It's pretty cool to one of the top three beers out of hundreds of entries, but it is even more cool to  have your face plastered on a tap handle.  Honey Bee's Lavender Wheat brewed by Caitlin DeClerq was the winner this year, and I did vote for her.  I like lavender so it was pretty obvious who I was going to choose.

And some winner's presentation photos. 

In addition to Caitlin's beer, two other homebrew entries (non-employees) were previously selected as winners.  The two winners Richard Roper - Friar Hop Ale and Rodney Kibzey (below) - Blackened Hops beer will also be in the 2011 Longshot Category 23 Variety 6-pack. 

Congrats to all the homebrewers.  I might want my face on a tap someday.  That's pretty awesome.