www.nthba.org

Hello fellow NTHBA members, my name is Matthew Linnenburger. Many of you may not know me; I'm still relatively new to the club. As announced at the last meeting, I have volunteered to be the organizer for this year's Limbo Challenge. I am posting this message as an open call for volunteers to help with the various rolls needed to pull off a successful competition. Roles such as registrar, head steward, head judge, etc. need to be filled. Please do not be discouraged if you have never helped organize a competition before. If you're interested, please reply to this message or send me an email at [email protected].

Matthew,

I can help with something. I did data last year.

Jimmy

I'll help out too.

Are y'all available this coming weekend (4/24-4/26) to get together for the first planning meeting? I'm going to be out of town on May 2nd and 9th.

I am on-call this weekend and can't venture away from home.

We should get a meeting together soon. July will be on us before we know it. Several decisions need to be made at the first meeting.
1) Changes if any to categories
2) Judging location
3) Awards location

I am sure there are others, but that is all I can think of right now. Once we have these decisions made, I can update the Limbo website.

Here are the counts from last years competition:
Light Lagers (13 Entries)
Pilsner (5 Entries)
European Amber & Dark Lager (10 Entries)
Light Hybrid Beer (25 Entries)
Amber Hybrid Beer (8 Entries)
English Pale Ale (8 Entries)
Scottish and Irish Ale (5 Entries)
American Ale (11 Entries)
English Brown Ale (9 Entries)
Brown Porter & Dry Stout (4 Entries)
German & Belgian Wheat Beer (16 Entries)
Belgian & Sour Ale (12 Entries)
Fruit Beer, S/H/V, Other Smoke and Wood Aged Beer (8 Entries)
Lawnmower Beer (12 Entries)

We could combine some of the categories if we wanted to save some money on medals.
I believe we should use the 2008 BJCP Guidelines for this year's Limbo.

What is your availability or constraints to setup a meeting?

I'm tied up this weekend with family commitments. I live in McKinney, so I'm not sure of a good central location to meet.

I think it's too late to make any changes to the categories in terms of adding new ones. Let's wait until next year when we will use the 2015 BJCP style guidelines since we will probably shake things up anyway. I believe the Beyers have volunteered to host judging this year. Craft and Growler has worked well for awards, but I know that we discussed moving it closer in somewhere. Other places that could work would be Rugby House (we have done it there in the past), Flying Saucer (probably could get the Pub of Love for an afternoon), or BJs Addison (I think we held it there in the past too). Those are all more central and should be slow on a Saturday afternoon, plus they all have food.

As far as combining categories, there are only a couple that make much sense to me: Porter/Stout could be combined with Scottish and Irish Ales since both categories were small last year. Pilsner was a small category. It could be combined with Light Lagers, although that category is pretty good sized by itself.

As far as a meeting goes, we could meet briefly at the club meeting on Tuesday after the raffle. Otherwise I am open on Monday and Thursday next week and the week of the 18th is pretty clear. The next two weekends are kind of crazy.

We can get a quick meeting together on Tuesday after the raffle to get things going. You can check the Limbo 2014 and 2013 Limbo challenge discussions for notes on those year's competitions.

The Limbo registration was opened yesterday (7/8).

I'll call our contact at J. Paul tomorrow and get the ball rolling with them.