ooh ooh ooh - I just had an idea.
I know I am the perennial swap meet puller outerer and I probably don't have much right to make swap meet suggestions, however...
What about the concept of a "Cube swap"???
How often do we hear - "no time for bottling", "haven't had a chance to ferment" (and many of the other lame excuses I have offered up at times)
Cube swapping would mean you could get someone else's brew day efforts, and add your own twist at fermentation.
I could see lots of collaborative communication between swapper and swappee about what might work well yeast, fermentation profile etc etc. I could even see blokes getting together post swap "Hey I fermented your cube - come round for a tasting"
It could be run in all manner of ways.
Lucky Dip Allocation of cubes.
A lucky dip drawing order - you get to pick which cube you want in an order drawn from a hat.
or even more fun...
Our Family does a wacky Kris Kringle thing that could be applied to a cube swap as follows.
- All Cubes placed in the middle
- Selection order is drawn out of a hat.
-
- Person one selects a Cube.
- Person two has the choice to select a cube from the middle - or steal person ones cube.
If a persons cube is stolen they get to select another one.
[*]Person three has the choice of selecting a cube from the middle - or stealing person one or twos cube...
- If a persons cube is stolen they get to select another one.
And so on until all the cubes are taken.
You can add rules around how often a cube can be stolen - generally it is only once. So once it has been stolen it is out of play. But if you want the game to go on for a while you can allow more steals.
Anyway you get the picture - I could see lots of drunken fun doing this.
Advantages -
it is much easier to you to brew a cube than to brew, ferment and bottle.
a lot less effort on swap day - no one has to line up and reallocate several hundred bottles.
