MTF Community Projects
Contents
Beer It Forward
Twice a year, Josh Osborne organizes a "Beer It Forward" with members of Milk The Funk. It works like a "Secret Santa" where everyone puts their name in a bucket, and semi-randomly Josh picks people to secretly send beer to. People are generally paired with people on the other side of the US (currently the BIF is limited to the US). A limited quantity of beer is established by Josh, with a portion of that beer being beers that the sender brewed themselves. Sign-ups occur a month or so before the target dates, which are usually in the spring and fall. Below are the reviews and comments on beers received for the BIF.
Wild Capture Swap
DeWayne Schaaf organizes a MTF Wild Capture swap.
Collaboration Brew
Dustin Carver organizes a collaboration brew that includes both commercial and homebrewers (ex: Toolbox "Truth From Heart").
- Collaboration Brew #4: Mud King. "Mud King" is a constantly growing mixed culture maintained by DeWayne Schaaf. The idea is that DeWayne will send a vial of Mud King to all participants (including an extra vial of lactic acid yeast or kveik), and they will brew their own recipe using Mud King. Once that beer is done, they will brew again using the yeast cake of Mud King but also adding either their own isolated yeast, or by open cooling overnight. The goal with the second brew is to potentially collect more variety of microbes to evaluate whether or not there is a "drift" in the character of future beers produced, either due to microbe ratios changing, or the introduction of new microbes (brewers are encouraged to keep a vial of the yeast trub from this addition of wild microbes). A Google Doc will collect all of the information about each person's brew, and how it turned out. Over 120 US MTF members, and 40 international members to participate.
Meetups
Milk The Funk hosts several regular meetups. Anyone can organize a meetup and post it to the "Events" tab in the MTF Facebook group. Meetups are also generally bottle shares as well but don't have to be. Reoccuring meetups include the following:
- HomebrewCon in the US: Jeff Mello from Bootleg Biology collects dregs from the bottle share, and later releases a one time blend of the microbes collected. This is generally held somewhere within the conference building after a seminar or at a convenient time.
- Great American Beer Festival meetup: this is generally hosted by James and Sarah Howat at Black Project Spontaneous Ales in Denver on Friday morning (10:00 am) the week of GABF.