(Boston, MA) – This week, Boston Beer Co.‘s the winners of last year’s Samuel Adams LongShot American Homebrew Contest finally saw their beers hit shelves. The brewery holds a competition every year in which over one thousand people send in their beers to be judged by Jim Koch and Co. at BBC. The result? The few folks who win have their beers made at the brewery and released in six-packs nationwide. Awesome concept.

According to the BBC website and as covered here previously, Alex Drobshoff’s Traditional Bock appears in the LongShot mixed 6-pack alongside Mike McDole’s Double IPA and Carissa Sweigart’s Cranberry Wit. Sweigart won the Samuel Adams employee homebrew competition. “Carissa’s beer was chosen by over 1,111 beer lovers at the 2008 Great American Beer Festival from among the three-employee homebrew finalist.”

BYO.com’s March-April issue has a thorough feature on last year’s winners. On Drobshoff: “Because of his homebrewing setup’s limitations he could only brew his bock, a lager, during the cooler months of the year. He perfected the brew over the course of two winters before he felt it was ready for competition, later deciding the beer was ready for the LongShot after winning a few blue ribbons in other competitions.”

Maybe the most anticipated beer included in the 6-pack will be McDole’s Double IPA. Like Drobshoff, McDole is a member of the California-based homebrewing club, Club DOZE as he has been for more than a decade. He has also been a regular guest on The Brewing Network broadcasts. Some have billed McDole’s mammoth Double IPA as a Pliny the Elder clone which is not far-fetched given he got the base recipe from Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo five years ago. The end result is a beer featuring seven different hops. McDole was actually a winner in 2007 but because of the hop shortage, his recipe couldn’t be brewed until this year.

The beers are currently filtering out into stores nationwide.