Wort Rally 2024 - Blonde Ale

Save the Date - Wort Pickup on Sunday, January 28, 2024

New location, same great event.

Save the Date for Sunday, January 28th! Together with Buffalo Creek Brewing we are organizing our 5th annual wort rally at Buffalo Creek Brewing in Long Grove, IL.

What is a wort rally you ask? The folks at Buffalo Creek Brewing will be brewing up a special recipe for us - all you have to do is add yeast and ferment the beer! Easiest brew day ever! The wort this year will be a blonde ale.

Proceeds will go to our friends at the Northern Illinois Food Bank.
Cost for the event is $55.00 per 5 gallons of wort. Space is limited so don’t wait.

This year the Wort Rally Competition part of the even will be in a “March Madness” style. Details below.

Our main goal is to raise $10,000 for the Northern Illinois Food Bank this year, but the Wort Rally also gives us an opportunity.

We love to see what you Homebrewers can come up with using this wort and all the crazy ideas that are rattling around inside your brain! And we want to reward your creativity by organizing a little competition.

You do not have to enter the competition to participate, but it is so much fun, that why wouldn’t you?

Competition Details:

Drop-off Information:

If you would like to participate and attend the awards ceremony, then you will need to follow these instructions. You need to drop off three, 12 oz amber beer bottles at Perfect Brewing Supply no later than end-of-day Thursday, March 14th.

On each bottle, please attach a removable note with a rubber band with the following information:

• Your name and phone number
• Your yeast region that you selected
• Your specific yeast
• Anything else that you did to your wort like dry hopping (with which hops), adding extra fermentables, adding oak, vanilla, etc.

Please ensure that you are submitting bottles that have unmarked caps. No sharpie writing on them and no swing-tops allowed.

Beers will be judged by industry peers and prizes will be awarded to each category winner and the overall winner.

Sign-up Information:

For the competition this year we are changing it up from how we did it in years past. We will have 4 Brackets, similar to a famous basketball tournament that takes place around the same time every year. Each bracket will be divided into 16 slots with room to expand once all the slots fill up.

The brackets will be based on the region of your yeast. Belgian Region, English Region, German Region, and the Wild Wild West, aka everything else. Everyone who enters will get a scoresheet with feedback based on the BJCP guidelines.

Each region will have a winner and then a BOS / Overall winner will be awarded. You can only sign up for one region per order, but multiple orders are allowed, and thus multiple regions. We encourage you to sign up for a spot in a region sooner than rather later to make sure you can use the yeast you want.

To select a region, please write one of the four, German, British/Irish, Belgian, or Wild West, in your order comments for each lot of Wort Rally you order that you want to enter the competition for.

Note: French yeast strains fall under the Belgian Region, Irish strains fall under the British Region, and Kveik strains fall under the Wild West Region.

Note: Please tell us your specific yeast selection by the wort pick-up day to make sure that your yeast and selected region match. If you select a region, for example Belgium, at signup but then you actually use a British yeast strain, you will be moved to the British region of the bracket if there is room. The goal here is to make sure that similar beers are paired with each other for the head-to-head bracket style judging.

The Awards Ceremony will be held on Saturday, March 23rd at Buffalo Creek Brewing.

NEW! Sponsorship Opportunities

This year we are also looking for local businesses and groups to participate in the Wort Rally. You will not be able to enter the competition but you will get to enjoy the beer and donate to charity!