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MCI 2011 Entrants

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mmclean

mmclean

Honey Master
Registered Member
Jul 22, 2010
1,135
2
38
Tennessee Valley
Just wanted to wish all who entered the MCI, Good Luck!

Going to drive up to the mountains and spend the day at the river with the family.

Cheers.

:occasion14:
 
MCI was awesome!! Congrats to all the winners (announced tomorrow!). The number of meads I have tried in my life increased by about a factor of 100 over this weekend. During the judging & paired dinner I know I had about 60 commercial meads on Friday. During judging I had about 25 homemade meads on Saturday. And oh my I have no idea how many I tried after that. I think it's better if no one tries to count those.

It was great to meet the folks who could make it. I really enjoyed getting a chance to judge alongside Pete, Wayne, and Ken. Vicky is awesome. Alan was a great roommate and brought some nice meads to try, and Kyle only spilled on me once. :p Talking with the commercial meadmakers was also a lot of fun, and having them try my mead is a rare treat.

Non-competition mead highlights included trying some meads I've read about here, like Wayne's Filleul de la Nuit, two versions of the Braggo-docio (Wayne and Alan), Ken's Heart of Darkness, and the side-by-side Wayne's Wolf Moon vs. Dogfish's Chateau Jiahu [Wolf Moon wins!]. Pete's mesquite mead was great.
 
Some pictures:

The judging starts out looking fairly calm...
DSCN1105.jpg


But too many good meads leads to chaos.
DSCN1108.jpg


DSCN1111.jpg

Lonely bottles waiting for people to drink them.

And finally:
DSCN1110.jpg

Why Aaron should not be allowed to own spray foam. It only took me 20 minutes to disassemble. And no bottles broke! I can't stress that enough.
 
It was an amazing weekend for sure, far exceeded my expectations. I'm going to have to start my own thread about my experience because I don't think some people fully grasp what an amazing thing gotmead.com and the Mazer Cup really are. We are seriously lucky as a community to have this website, and I don't think I exaggerate when I say that gotmead is almost certainly the single most important wheel in the machine of the mead revolution.

EDIT: And when you look at that last picture Aaron posted (remembering that he's an engineer) try to put yourself in my shoes seeing that as he opened the box, because the first night we got there we had a good long discussion about how engineers tend to over-engineer everything... point proven!

But indeed, none of them broke!!! :)
 
Sounds like it was awesome!! I may actually consider getting a passport...


...(and am I the only one looking at the spray foam, considering that electronics and other delicates often come packed like that, and thinking, "Why didn't I think of that? Now, how do we make it so it won't take 20 min to open...?")
 
To those of you Gotmeaders who were able to come to the event and help out - THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

The Mazer Cup could not happen without your help, and I am both extremely grateful and in absolute awe over how quickly those folks who were not involved in previous years picked up several of the 20-odd dozen balls we have to juggle to pull off the event, and kept them all in the air! Nice work, one and all!!

BTW - Results should be posted sometime today, according to Oskaar, so stay tuned to the MCI website where soon all will be revealed! I can say that Gotmead Brewmasters were well represented in the cadre of mazer winners! ;D
 
WOW!

Thanks for posting the photos. Those meads look gorgeous!
I may come and volunteer next year, if it coincides with the AAHPM meeting in Denver...Anybody know next year's dates?

And CG, get thee to the passport office!
 
wayneb said:
Not final yet (pending checking the schedule against other events in that timeframe), but we're tentatively looking at weekends in the range of late Feb to early March.
Click to expand...

Shucks, that doesn't go with my AAHPM plan...
I may just have to make two trips to Denver...
 
AToE said:
EDIT: And when you look at that last picture Aaron posted (remembering that he's an engineer) try to put yourself in my shoes seeing that as he opened the box, because the first night we got there we had a good long discussion about how engineers tend to over-engineer everything... point proven!

But indeed, none of them broke!!! :)
Click to expand...

Yes, well, that is true. In my defense, it was my first foray into spray foam. I'm just glad I thought to wrap the bottles so the foam wasn't permanently attached.

In my research I did see a system for making those bags of foam that perfectly shape around whatever you ship. Too expensive for a one-off box of mead though.
 
Aaron, a bit of a hint if you use foam again...spray the foam over a thin but sturdy cord, wrapped around the bottom of the bottles and up the sides with the ends sticking out the top. You should be able to pull the string down through the foam and pull the bottle out fairly easily.

Of course, if you drive, you can bring all you want, no worries. Try to make the next one over a holiday weekend--spring break, I could drive. Summer, I could drive. Christmas, I could drive. :)
 
akueck said:
Yes, well, that is true. In my defense, it was my first foray into spray foam. I'm just glad I thought to wrap the bottles so the foam wasn't permanently attached.

In my research I did see a system for making those bags of foam that perfectly shape around whatever you ship. Too expensive for a one-off box of mead though.
Click to expand...

You just gave me a good idea for the next year, because foam is better than the big heavy wood box that dhl obliged me to use.
 
The way I've seen foaming done is to spray it in a plastic bag and then smosh the bag of foam around the items you're packaging so it doesn't adhere to the items, if I try it for the group brew, I might put toilet paper tubes over the bottle necks just so it comes off easily.
 
Chevette Girl said:
The way I've seen foaming done is to spray it in a plastic bag and then smosh the bag of foam around the items you're packaging so it doesn't adhere to the items, if I try it for the group brew, I might put toilet paper tubes over the bottle necks just so it comes off easily.
Click to expand...

Good idea AJ, I may try that next year. :)
 
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