Attention Home Brewers! It is time to get prepared for the Southern Brewer’s Challenge! In honor of National Home Brewing Month, please read the following announcement. This is your chance to enter a pro-am competition to have your recipe made by a commercial brewery, and sold at restaurants across the southeast. Here is how it works:
Taco Mac and Red Brick Brewing Co. have partnered up to help make one lucky home brewer’s dream come true. We will be receiving submissions throughout the month of July at specific Atlanta-area Taco Mac locations. Dates and locations will be listed below. Our judging panels, made up of representatives from Taco Mac and Red Brick, along with other Atlanta-area beer luminaries, will judge the submissions throughout the month of August. Once the winner has been announced, the brewery will take some time to fine tune the recipe to their brew system’s specifications. Once a final recipe is reached, the beer will go into production. The release date will be targeted for the very first opportunity in January, 2013.
Once the beer is available for sale at all area Taco Mac locations, the brewery will go back to work on another batch. This next batch will be bottled for a targeted launch in the spring of 2013. In fact, the release of the bottles (to be sold at area off-premise retail stores) will coincide with the announcement of the 2013 Southern Brewer’s Challenge. If this program is as successful as we expect, we will continue to do this every year.
The submissions will be at the following locations on the specified dates:
- Monday, July 2nd at Taco Mac in Cumming and Peachtree City
- Monday, July 9th at Taco Mac in Kennesaw and Buford
- Monday, July 16th at Taco Mac at Prado and Metropolis
- Monday, July 23rd at Taco Mac in Duluth and Crabapple
- Monday, July 30th at Taco Mac at Windward Pkwy and Decatur
When planning out what you are going to submit, here are some things to think about:
- No more than two styles per brewer.
- The winning beer needs to be produced in a large quantity, so choose ingredients that are readily available.
- Red Brick brews mostly ales, and in the interest of not tying up their equipment with a lengthy lagering process, ale styles would be preferred.
All submissions must have an accompanying info sheet, which will be provided at a later date. In addition, all submissions must be in the form of two bottles of twelve ounces each. No big bottles, no growlers, etc. Lastly, the submissions need to be received at the stores specified, on the dates specified, and between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm. There will be someone on site to receive the samples during those times, which will prevent loss, breakage, or anything else that would prevent samples from getting to the tasting panel in tact. If you miss the submission date, you must choose a different location to drop off your beer. If you leave it at a location before or after the submission date and time, it will not get into the judging process.
