Announcing the “Jerk Off”

It is with great pleasure that I announce the first ever “Jerk Off” which will be held during San Francisco Cocktail Week (Sept. 17th to 23rd). If you’ve read my book, Fix the Pumps, you might understand why this competition is called the Jerk Off, and if not let me explain. A few months ago drinks genius Russell Davis emailed me with a great idea for a drink competition that focused on soda fountains and soda jerks. The best part was that he wanted to call it the “Jerk Off” which is an awesome double entendre and soda jerkers of old would be proud of this linguistic concoction. This very well could be the funniest drink related event ever. So what does the competition entail? Read on for all the details.

The competition is open to everyone (bartender, soda jerk, etc.) and will be the final event at San Francisco Cocktail week (Sunday September 23rd). We are still arranging some details like location, time the grand prize but we should have that info shortly.

The competitors will be required to make two soda style drinks, one low / no alcohol (less than 2% abv) and one normal drink. The drinks can be of the carbonated “fizz” variety or of the shake style (milk, eggs, etc.). We will be judging based on the typical criteria (appearance, aroma, taste) but we are also looking for humorous drink names. Bonus points for double entendres.

We are still working on a sponsor for the event, so depending on who gets involved there may be a requirement to use a specific brand but for now we are accepting all drink recipes at [email protected]. And if you are a brand interested in sponsoring this event please feel free to contact us.

During the competition we will be trying out some new judging methods (the O’Neil / Hess Method) which stems from some discussions Robert Hess and I had last year about ways to make these types of competitions better. We are aiming to have 12 competitors, which can be a bit daunting if we were to judge each person individually. There is no quicker way to disengage the crowd than a seemingly endless stream of drink preparation. To that end, we will be doing three heats of 4 competitors each. That’s right, there will be 4 people making drinks at the same time. From the judges perspective it will be much easier to identify the talent and move them to the final round. The final round will be made of the top competitor from each heat, again making drinks all at the same time. We guarantee that this will make the competition faster and more entertaining.

We are accepting recipe submission now, so get your soda syphon charged and send the recipes to [email protected] and you could be the world’s best soda jerk. If you have any questions please feel free to post them in the comments section, our Jerk Off Facebook page or email me directly. We will also be using the Twitter hashtag #sfjerkoff.

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