The first six minutes of the challenge
Normally we here at HBS strive to focus on savoring home brewed and craft beer, but every once in a while we also like to promote the absurd binge drinking of those same wonderful beers. For those of you that have not heard, The Boxing Cat Brewery has a drinking challenge aptly named “The Twelve Round Challenge”. Each contestant, read victim, must drink twelve pub pints of beer in under two hours. The rules are slightly altered for the female gender, but are still as daunting, twelve “generous” half pints again in two hours or less. This Saturday was the largest group of alcoholics yet, seven brave souls sat down at 4pm Saturday, said good bye to their dignity and sobriety and began an epic quest towards drunken fame.
Each contestant seemed to have their own theories on how to win, some brought beer blenders, hoping to stave off carbonation, others had chants or musical inspiration, the most interesting of all was, one contestant’s thought that somehow taking off an article of clothing with every beer would bring him closer to his prize.
I am going to spare you the complete play by play, but I will do a quick rundown of how the afternoon’s events transpired. Each contestant came out of the gate strong, confident in their abilities to drink copious amounts of delicious craft beer. In the first 30 minute many contestants were well on their way with multiple beers in their stomachs. Most of us can handle three beers, but not many of us have drank three beers in 30 minutes and still had nine more to drink. With that in mind they kept on pounding. Large gulps of Boxing Cat Helles streaming down their throats, counting the minutes and trying to fend off, not only the feelings of fullness, but the ever present feeling drunkenness creeping up on them.
As the hour mark quickly approached and sobriety quickly exited the building the tables had turned. The contestants no longer had the upper hand, the glorious powers of craft brew was winning out. As the 8 beer threshold approached for one contestant it proved too much for his body to hold and thus made its second appearance to the crowd in a stream of frothy foam and his pre-game breakfast, now only 6 remained. At this point the girls were pulling ahead keeping strong and focused on the prize, a tee shirt that now, after an hour of drinking did not seem an appropriate reward for the bodily abuse. The hour and 8 beer mark proved to be a tipping point. It weeded out the weak taking with it two more victims.
As the vomit began to pile up in the bathrooms the competition became fierce. Two men, two women, and only three pairs of pants remained intact. With twenty minutes left one of the girls pulled ahead of the pack becoming the first to finish. Roars came from the crowd as she gulped down those last painful drops of beer. Three still had to tackle their remaining beers. The glasses seemed bigger now, as if they kept refilling themselves, each sip was more painful than the last. No matter how hard the beer fought against them they did not give up. In the end another girl danced in victory taking her last beer down while perched atop a table. One of the men, in only his boxers and undershirt, choked down his twelfth beer only to have it reappear from his stomach with only 5 seconds left to go. Last, was the one man that fully conquered his goal, with drool on his face he ushered in his win. The challenge was over, craft beer had taken many victims and the ones it couldn’t claim would pay dearly for their battle.
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