Kegs and Kitchen

Call it karma or whatever but I was feeling a little guilty for giving ol’ Jim Koch a hard time for that Imperial Pilsner he got $10 from me for. The day I posted that review, I saw an interesting article on Beer Advocate regarding Jim and his Longshot Homebrew Contest.

For those that aren’t familiar, Sam Adams puts on a contest for homebrewers around the nation to submit a sample of their best brew with the possibility of having it brewed professionally and distributed nationally. How cool is that?

Well, it seems that this year there was a bit of controversy surrounding the contest. Apparently the beer that was selected as the winner was a double IPA brewed by Mike McDole. It was announced that he was the winner and plans were started to make his beer. There was just one problem, the world wide hop shortage that we’ve been hearing so much about. It was determined that the brewery would not be able to duplicate Mike’s recipe because they simply couldn’t get all of the hop varieties that he used. So, in the end it was left up to Mike whether or not he wanted them to substitute the unavailable hops with other types, undoubtedly changing the profile of his prized beer. Mike made what I think was the right decision and requested that they hold off on brewing his recipe until they could do it exactly as he intended.

The folks at Sam Adams received a shitstorm of complaints from beer lovers everywhere, which prompted Jim Koch to draft a reply to Todd Alstrom of Beer Advocate where the controversy began. Here is a copy of his reply which I think was incredibly classy:

Todd -As you know from helping me with the LongShot judging, Mike McDole won our Samuel Adams Homebrew Contest with a delicious and complex Double IPA. We planned to brew his beer for national distribution as part of our LongShot 2008 6-pack. Back in June when we picked this beer, we had no idea there would be a hop shortage of unprecedented dimensions. Most of the seven varieties of hops in Mike’s recipe are literally sold out. They were not available at any price. We had possible substitutes for the missing hops but they would have changed the taste of Mike’s beer. Since we don’t normally buy these hop varieties we didn’t have existing contracts with farmers in place. All of the hops dealers and farmers we’ve approached to try to secure the hops to brew Mike’s beer already had their allotments promised to other breweries. I reached out to Mike last week to alert him to the problem. I presented him a plan to brew his recipe substituting hops that we already have or can secure. Ultimately that would have been a different beer. We were willing to go ahead and make a version of Mike’s Double IPA. Since it was Mike’s beer, we left the final decision up to him as the brewer. And he made what I consider the right decision for a brewer to make. Neither Mike nor I wanted to compromise the beer. It’s just too good. Together we both decided to go to plan B. We are going to defer the introduction of Mike McDole’s Double IPA until next year when we can get the right hops. We have already started the hunt for hops from next season’s crop. As you’ll remember from the judging based on the sample brew that we tasted, this is a beer worth waiting for. Cheers!Jim Koch
Founder & Brewer
Samuel Adams / Boston Beer Company

Nice work Jim. You did the right thing, and you rock for putting this contest together in the first place. Sorry for that comment about your panties!