A friend and myself were talking the other day about this and thought it would be awesome for the beer nerd "collector/sampler" crowd. For those of you who don't know what geo-caching is, basically its a treasure hunt using your smart phone app (kinda like Pokémon Go I think), you follow your directions that lead you usually through woodland trails or community parks etc. to a hidden place where someone leaves a small treasure. Etiquette is to take the treasure and leave a new treasure for the next person to find in its place. Mostly just little worthless trinkets and junk from the Dollar Store, but what if there was an offshoot from this for the craft beer crowd. How cool would it be to find a can of Tree House (fresh) hiding in some hole in a tree in Northern California for example and you bring along in your backpack another can/bottle for someone else to stumble upon? Issues I see are underage kids getting into it, and bad weather issues ruining good beers. Anyway, what are some other thoughts on whether this would work/not work for anyone who has geo-cached before?
I think if it was very well organized among a small group of people for let's say one day then it could be interesting. Find a great cold beer,leave a different great cold beer. Like a share and a long walk gets married
Kind of a cool thought - how many beer drinkers are into cycling or mountain biking/hiking already. But it would need some sort of control regarding time - I can see that being the big downfall. Maybe it would be more like an event for a specified time versus an ongoing thing so that fossilized IPA doesn't become a thing. And yeah - there's the kids thing...
Cool idea but I can't imagine it being allowed on any type of widespread use just because you can't leave alcohol lying around and no way to verify who is picking it up. Question: if I leave a beer then someone picks it up do they leave another beer in the same spot or find another location? Also, do you know how many people are in your specific geo area? I would hate to leave a beer hidden if there isn't another user with a long distance away because nobody would pick it up.
What about modifying it a bit ? Some of us collect empty bottles of imports and hard to find craft beers. Bottle caps are also collectible. Drop off an empty Founders Old Curmudgeon bottle and find one that contained Flensburger Dunkel. Or perhaps deposit 10 different caps from 10 different countries in exchange for a like amount.
Well the way Geocaching works is that it is a same location where you take and leave your prize. Its a marked coordinate spot with GPS, but I think you can establish another location somehow (I never got that deep into the hobby so not sure).
I don't know, it would be pretty intriguing to stumble upon a 10 year old Cantillon bottle left in some cool dark place (i.e. cave aged). Not exactly reality, but just playing out a role play fantasy situation.
Like LeRose said,find hikers and bikers and it could work. I like hiking and it could a good idea and fun to search for a great beer as well as leaving a beer that I think is exceptional. Just after finding a few it would go from a hike to a sit on a log and get buzzed
Is there laws against leaving closed container alcohol in a public place? Everything I tried to google search on this just talked about open alcohol and possession of minors. I'm sure there is something illegal about leaving alcohol products unopened in a public place, but I couldn't find anything. Probably just too bizarre of a concept for the law creators to ever consider...who leaves unopened beer, wine or spirits randomly lying around in public.
One of the lessons I learned from watching the Walking Dead is to not consume 'strange' beverages you happen upon in the wild! Cheers!
I think this would work better as organized single treasure hunt event than an on-going geo-cache project. Putting aside from the legality of leaving alcohol in public places... there's also an issue with cheap-skates who take more than than they give. Cheap-skates are bad in face-to-face situations (like bottle shares or splitting a check), imagine how bad they will be without the extra social pressure. Also, if a beer geocacher's teenage kid overhears there is beer in the woods and they only need is a cell phone to find it, then your little project is over. This geocaching idea reminds me a bit of trail magic, which sometimes includes beer.
Otherwise known as my own woodland beer stash. I have a trail with an old well nearby that fills with water sometimes during the spring and fall, perfect beer temp.
