Competition bottling SNAFU. Advice?

Got a situation I hope someone can help me with.

We had our club tasting competion for the next AHA Club Only Competition last night. The bad news is that the beer I had planned on entering wasn’t quite ready yet. So I took a different beer instead. The good news is that my back-up beer ended up winning 1st place. The bad news is that, because I hadn’t planned on entering this as a competition beer, I only have 4 bottles of it left, and they’re all recycled Sam Adams/New Belgium bottles (raised lettering, so can’t be used for competition).

So my question is: does anybody have any suggestions for a way to salvage this situation?

  • Could I open those bottles, transfer them to competition-acceptable bottles and then add some new yeast and sugar?
    My entry was a basic porter, to which I then added some homemade secret ingredient  :-X extract. I still have some bottles of the basic

porter (in acceptable bottles). Would it be possible to open some of those, add the extract along with some more yeast and priming sugar and recap?

I know there’s not a good way to do this. I’m just looking for the best way to get three bottles worth that won’t be completely oxidized. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Actually, the rules are not so rigid for bottles with raised lettering.  The intent is to have the bottles as anonymous as possible and since so many people use recycled S.A. bottles they are almost always allowed by the competition registrars.  Send two S.A. bottles and don’t attempt to transfer.

Jeffy, thanks for that great news. I just had a chance to go back and look at the COC competition rules and, sure enough, just as you said, “Bottles with raised glass lettering are acceptable.”

It’s my first entry in a COC, so I’m glad I’ll still have a good beer to enter.  Thanks again.