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Monday, August 22, 2011

Math Trade #4 The Quad Lazer – BIF

If you happened to read the AleWatcher’s excellent blog entry on trading and packaging that I linked to in my first trade post you might have noticed that there are multiple types of beer trades out there.  Outside the standard ISO:FT trade there are BIFs (beer it forward), CIFs (chalice it forward), GIFs (growler it forward), IPs (in person) and LIF (lottery it forward). This post is going to cover the latest BIF I was in.  

The concept behind a BIF is similar to a standard ISO:FT only it involve a group of people instead of one on one.  It also differs in that you don’t ship to the person you get beer from.  For example person A ships to person B who ships to person C who ships to person A completing the circle.    

There are three types of BIF, a traditional BIF in which only one box is in transit, a shotgun BIF in which everyone ships at the same time and math BIF in which an algorithm is used to determine who sends their beer to whom. 

BIFs are set up by a host in the following manner; the organizer (host) picks a what type of BIF they want to run, what the theme is, how many people will be involve and what the rule will be.  They then post up a NBO (new BIF opportunity) thread in which they outline the basics of the BIF and how they want people to sign up (a post on the topic, BM, email etc).  

Math Trade #4 The Quad Lazer

The "Puts"
The title of the tread should indicate that the rest of this post will be about a math trade I recently took part in called Math Trade #4 The Quad Lazer organized by the great neorunner.  For a more in depth explanation of what a math trade is and how it works check out this thread neorunner started when he organized the first round of his math trade series.






Match 1
The Rules

neorunner outlined the following rules for this round;
Must be an established trader
50 players max – Ended up being 57
Max 3 beers entered aka puts per player
Max 5 wants aka targets per entered beer
Duplicates will be allowed.
Extras are just that extras and not required

Having a good track record and participated in BIFs in the past I made the cut and was able to play.  

The Trade

As far as my puts I tossed in a 2011 Parabola from Firestone Walker and two Bruery Beers; Pinolambicus and ISO:FT.  The total list of all the puts can be found here http://bit.ly/MathTrade.

I was able to match 2 for 3 which isn’t all that bad considering 7 people didn’t match at all. In total 96 boxes went out representing 94 of 162 successful matches (58%) consisting of 7 groupings; 62, 14, 7, 4, 3 and 2 grouping of 2.

I sent out the The Bruery – ISO:FT (Target) with some extras; Sierra Nevada – 2011 Bigfoot, Anchor Brewing – 2011 Old Foghorn Barleywine and SNB Brewing – Bourbon Barrel Age Wookiee to desaparecido in Burke, VA.

Match 2
The Bruery - Pinotlambicus (Target) when to johndoe8 in La Jolla, CA along with a SNB Brewing – BeanyTink’s Farmstead Ale and a Founders Breakfast Stout.  It was cool even though I shipped ground it got there the next day.  

It took awhile to get anything back but in the end I received 2 boxes in the mail.

My first box arrived from petroos in NY with the following; from Goose Island a Bourbon County Brand Vanilla Stout (target), this gets triple score status as they are becoming impossible to trade for as it was a onetime beer, the other beer was a Captain Lawrence Xtra Gold Tripel (I’m going to save this for the next time I brew with Shawn)

From another Scott (no BA has stepped for to claim ownership yet) out of Illinois a received a two bottle shippers taped together and filled with Three Floyds; a 2007 Behemoth (target) and an Arctic Panzer Wolf (I've wanted to try this one)

I can’t wait to do it again in round 5!

Cheers

-SNB

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