The Chili Cookoff
This Sunday 2/2/25 is our annual Chili Cook-off - Register Your Chili!
Chili and beer are as natural a combination as peanut butter and jelly. They also seem to fall into a nearly single circular Venn diagram of likes. If you like beer, odds are pretty good you like chili too.
If you're a homebrewer, you're no doubt also a home cook.
So it's only natural that back in 1987 the club launched a chili cook-off. At first it was a sporadic affair, because homebrewers are a slightly diffuse bunch and being in our teens there wasn't yet a sense of "tradition" in the group ethos. It took until 1992 for the Chili Cook-off to become a fixture of the club calendar as the cornerstone of our February meeting. Because what better way to usher in the end of the football season than with a spicy meat stew!
Over the years we've had endless varieties of chili from classic Texas Red (just beef, onions and chiles), your "Middle American" (ground beef, beans, tomatoes), California Vegetarian, Chile Verde (pork and green chiles) and on and on.
It's always a fun day to drink some homebrew and fiercely judge 10-16 different chiles and wonder at the flavors of it all.
And the prizes - so many (not) - fame, glory, beer and memberships!
Here's a few examples from over the years - including the first ever winning recipe from 1987 by Pete Klaiber (who may or may not have gone on to work, fittingly, for the USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council) [Hat tip to MB who pulled this from the archives]
