There will not be a Stout Challenge in 2024.

No, no, not the Brewers Guild event, that is the Stout Invitational, and it is still being held at Bathtub Row Brewing in Los Alamos on March 2. Tickets will be on sale soon, and we will share the link.

We are referring to our Stout Challenge, a blind taste test that started out in the kitchen of Franz Solo’s father-in-law’s house back in 2012, just a month into the Crew’s existence. It has since spanned 12 editions, mostly at the House of Solo, but with a couple pandemic lockdown stops at our friend Dan’s house and then at Andrew’s condo.

There were a lot of stouts consumed, some from breweries now faded into history (Chama River’s Sleeping Dog Stout won in 2016), others still going strong. No brewery won it more than twice, none won back-to-back. The final list of winners:

• 2012, Marble Oatmeal Stout
• 2013, La Cumbre Malpais Stout
• 2014, Tractor Double Plow Oatmeal Stout
• 2015, Boxing Bear Standing 8 Stout
• 2016, Chama River Sleeping Dog Stout
• 2017, Starr Brothers Foggy Monocle
• 2018, Canteen Dark & Lusty Stout
• 2019, Starr Brothers Foggy Monocle
• 2020, La Cumbre Malpais Stout
• 2021, Canteen Dark & Lusty Stout
• 2022, Marble Cholo Smooth
• 2023, Harmon Lane Tin Cup Stout

It was a fun run while it lasted. As we have all gotten older and seen our lives change, it has become harder and harder to get together in sufficient numbers. Super Bowl Sunday was just about the only day we could get a majority of Crew in one place, but now even that pseudo holiday is not enough to draw everyone together. Perhaps we will try again next year, but I personally feel that this is the end. Fear not, though, the few of us left writing will keep on doing just that.

We raise our glasses in honor of the stouts, the breweries that make them, and how much fun we had in the past. But, in the past it shall live now, as we move forward into an unwritten future.

— Stoutmeister