Brews for New Avenues 2014

As for the 'duds' on the wall, we enlist help getting bottles for that from just about everyone involved with New Avenues. So, many Ambassador Board members, employees, etc. who visit other areas of the country on summer vacations are asked to pick up $30 or so worth of out-of-market beer for the wall. Almost none of them are huge beer geeks, so someone who goes into a store and picks up a couple of local/mixed 6-packs and a few bombers, that's what we get. They are taking time out of their vacations/travel time already to get beer for us, and we can't expect them to find the best quality/value ratio across the board.

As for the PDX-local stuff like 10 Barrel, Black Cap Raspberry, etc., when we pick up kegs and raffle items from different places, they'll often throw in a case of beer as well (people have been amazingly generous across the board), so those tend to go on the wall.

I just saw maltmaster's post after writing the above, and we did do that last year with the note and multiple bottles. That somehow slipped through the cracks this year, probably due to us being completely overwhelmed with the quantity of donations coming in very close to the event. Also, considering the fact that the wall sold out in about 10 minutes last year, we wanted to stretch things out as much as possible so as many GA people who aren't huge beer geeks get a chance to participate as possible.

We'll definitely take all of these ideas into account to improve next year.

 

So it got hung up in customs and didn't arrive until today, but that just means we already have next year's BFNA marquee item:



The Geuze Society in Pajottenland has a yearly blending day where they taste unblended lambics and create a Geuze. The Geuze van 't Kasteel 750ml we auctioned off on Saturday was the 2010 blend. This is the first blend the society ever created in 2008. Magnum #5 of 15. More info here.