UPDATE WINNERS ANNOUNCED 

Well, while I admitted defeat earlier, I actually did call the winners accurately! The winners of the Samuel Adams LongShot Contest 2007 were:

 - Mike McDole - Double IPA
 - Rodney Kibzey  - Weizenbock

I was right all along! Supposedly the Double IPA is a Pliney the Elder clone... Can't wait to try that. And I always love a good weizenbock. Look out for this pack!

Oh yeah, and the Employee Winner was the Grape Pale Ale... I was hoping for the Rye IPA with Honey as we brewed one of those as our second recipe ever, but oh well. I'm intrigued by this offering. As long as it's not Smuckers Jam and beer, it could be good!

PAST WRITING ON THIS SUBJECT: 
So, the results of the Samuel Adams LongShot Contest are almost ready to be made public. From their site:

The results are in!  Congratulations to Mike McDole of California, Rodney Kibzey of Illinois, Dave Pobutkiewicz of New Jersey, and David Jackson of Georgia for being selected as finalists in the 2007 Samuel Adams® American Homebrew Contest™.  All four will join us at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver where we’ll announce which two will be included in the LongShot® variety pack. 

If you find yourself at the GABF, please be sure to stop by the LongShot booth to meet the finalists and vote on the 3rd brew to be included in the LongShot variety pack from our Samuel Adams employee homebrew contest.  

We here at DrinkCraftBeer.com, however, already have the results (or at least a very good tip on them). I'm going to put my money on Mike McDole with his Double IPA and Rodney Kibzey with his Weizenbock! Although, the fact that the other two finalists were named Dave supports our theory here that Dave's brew beer. Check out our interviews if you want proof, there's a lot of Daves in there. But, back to the LongShot Contest, those are the labels they have received approval on from COLA, so that's what I'm betting on.

For the employee beer, I'm going to guess the Maibock will win, even before they do voting at the Great American Beer Fest. Good luck to everyone, but I'm pretty happy with those results. Samuel Adams could use a hoppy beer in their arsenal.

For those who care, the people who didn't win brewed:

Dave Pobutkiewicz - Helles Bock
David Jackson - American IPA

Let's see if my predictions pan out.

 *** OK, so looks like my predictions may have been a little hasty, to say the least. They have approved 4 labels for the Homebrew Contest, and 2 more for the employee contest, as well as a third keg label. Also, the regional winner who brewed a Helles Bock, his entry is now called a Maibock, hence the above confusion about it being an employee brew So, now we have the possible winners as:

HOMEBREW:
Double IPA
American IPA
Maibock (was reported originally as a Helles Bock)
Weizenbock

EMPLOYEE BREW:
Grape Pale Ale
Weiss Beer with Orange
Rye IPA with Honey

Good luck to all!

This is the until-now-draft-only imperial stout from Oskar Blues. As you know, we have quite an affinity for anything OB here at DrinkCraftBeer.com. I’m pretty psyched to see an imperial stout in a can… time to see how beer ages in cans I guess! Plus it’s going to be a sweet looking can! Label says:

Half Baked. Fully Roasted. Cross-eyed. Cyclopean. Cancupiscent.

10.5% abv
12 oz. can

UPDATE FROM OSKAR BLUES:

On Oct. 10 at 10:50 AM at our pub in Lyons, Oskar Blues will release the first cans of our highly acclaimed Ten FIDY Imperial Stout.

First brewed last year as our winter seasonal, it's a gentle-giant rendition of the style. Immensely malty and viscous, its hefty alcohol (10.5% ) and IBUs are buried under thick, comforting blankets of roasted flavor.

Like our other canned goods, Ten FIDY expands the definition of "canned beer."

We're canning up just 100 cases of Ten FIDY, and it will only be available for purchase at the brewpub. It'll be in fourpacks, a la our Gordon. For $10.50. Get here fast if you'd like some for your OBB stash, we expect these cans to go in a very short time.

Part of the Blackwater Series of big beers. We reported on the Pumking and Imperial Oatmeal Stout a while back, and they just hit us here in Boston recently. I’m loving the Oatmeal Stout, so can’t wait for this one! Label says:

A Stout Brewed with Chocolate. The Ancients called it “food for the Gods.”

The Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya, unfolds a complex web of mystery around a beverage known as xocoati (ch-co-atle).
At Southern Tier, we’re not surprised that hieroglyphs of the ancient Maya depict chocolate being poured for the rulers and gods. Even through the many voyages of Columbus, the bean remained nothing more than a strange currency of the native peoples until becoming popularized by Louis XIV.
Moving through centuries, the circular journey of cacao has been realized in our brewing house, encompassing the complexity of the darkest, bitter-sweet candy together with the original frothy cold beverage of the Maya to bring to you our Blackwater Series Choklat Stout. We have combined the finest ingredients to tempt your senses & renew the power & interrelation of history in every bottle.

11% abv
22 oz. bomber
Bittersweet Belgian Chocolate

Some of you might remember the contest they had where you could vote between two new Sam Adams’ beers, and they’d make one of them. It was between an Irish Red Ale and a Dunkelweizen. See what Devon and I had to say when we tasted them here. Looks like the Dunkelweizen won. Nice, that’s what we voted for! No real information on the label, though.

12 oz. bottle

Redhook is one of those breweries that takes a bit of flack from craft beer people. We like them, they make some very fine and drinkable beer. Now, I guess, we’ll see how they do with some bigger offerings. The label says:

Vigorously hopped, patiently aged. Hand brewed, double mashed.

10.5% abv
12 oz. bottle

A single batch limited edition beer from the Harpoon Brewing Company in Boston, MA.

7.4% abv
18 IBUs
22 oz. bomber

Much less info on this label than their Blackwater Series. It’s a porter brewed with raspberries.

12 oz. bottle

A while back, in a move that surprised many in the Craft Beer community, Bell’s Brewing Company pulled out of the lucrative Illinois market over an issue with distributors. They distribution rights were sold to a larger house who did not want to deal with their entire line, but just a few of the best sellers. Larry Bell and his crew, worried that this new company would not fully have the best interests of the Kalamazoo company at heart and would not know how to best service a craft label such as Bell’s, opted to pull their business out of Illinois rather than work with a distributor who was not fully behind them.

While this could easily turn into an article about franchise law and how distribution works, it won’t. A quick summary is in order, though. As many of you know, Illinois has a three tier beer distribution system. Tier 1, the producer, brews the beer. Tier 2, the distributor, takes the beer from the producer then sells and ships it to the retailer. Tier 3, the retailer, then sells it to you, the consumer. Due to the nature of the brewing industry in post-prohibition America, with huge breweries and mostly small distributors, laws were put in place that make it virtually impossible to leave a distributor without good cause. Not carrying all your brands does not count in this case. This is why Bell’s left Illinois, rather than go to a different distributor.

So where are we going with this? Well, as you know, we like to keep you up to date on what’s coming down the pipeline for new beers. On our latest check, we found the labels to the right.

Now, this is fine. People put out new beers all the time. In fact, we love it! What’s curious is the line on the back: “Brewed especially for the people of the great state of Illinois.”

Is Bell’s putting out a new line of protest beers in their existing markets? Maybe some novelty bottles for a brewery only beer? I don’t know. I’m intrigued, though, as everything I’ve had by these guys during “Devon and Jeff Drink the Great Lakes” rocked!

We attempted to contact Bell's for this story, and got no response to our inquiries. For now, we're still in the dark as to what's going on.