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Finally a weekend without a thunderstorm, the gods had smiled down upon us indeed! Beer and cookouts go hand in hand, there is no better time of year than the beginning of the cookout season. The Memorial Day cookout usually belongs to some friends of ours, it’s always a great time, but when Mrs. LuvParty and I caught word that they were opting out this year we immediately raised our BBQ flag.

I don’t mean to toot my own horn here, but the LuvParties throw a damn fine cookout! Thus we were confronted with the question the other day from a regular attendee, “LuvParties, if there was a formula for putting together a badass cookout what would you say it is?” My reaction, “wow” I had always thought of cookouts as an art, but perhaps there is a science to be perfected in this realm of strategic social convergence.

After a late night in front of the wall sized dry erase board i came to this conclusion:

W { [ (A+B)*(N +I+T) ] / (E - P) } = Successful Cookout

W = Weather
A = Available Activities
B = Available Beverages
N = Number of Quality Invitations
I = Quality of the Invitation
T = Theme of Interest
E = Alternative Events
P = Previous Success

W

Weather is the largest impactor for our formula. Not a lot of explanation needed here, but if it’s truly a cookout, then it’s outside. The “W” holds the outside multiplier spot because regardless of what the other numbers the presence of extreme weather can be devastating! It should be noted that in special cases if Theme and Weather are related and even bad weather can be negated, here I’m thinking of a hurricane party.

(A+B)

Available Activities should be highlighted in a well crafted invitation. I like to set up horseshoe pits and a dart board, but be creative. Wii bowling is even an option in this day and age. But here’s the thing, potential attendees often attribute more significance to the activities that will be present prior to the event than the level at which they actually use them when they arrive. People forget how much time they can blow just drinking, chatting it up with friends, and standing around the grill. Which brings me to available beverages, don’t get me wrong accepting a sum of zero here shouldn’t hurt you too much, but this is an area to score bonus points. If your like me, you exist between the days of the Bud Light Kegger of college and the Lamplighter’s society’s house red or white wine… That’s right, we’re talk’n BYOB territory which is totally acceptable, but if you want to be a bit flashy with “B” I think you’ll find it will pay off big in the long run. Forget trying to buy several sixers of “good import beer” or “good craft beer” it goes fast and often people are forced to drink a beer that, while it’s good and while you love it, isn’t thier favorite style. So here are my two suggestions;
(1) Brew a batch of homebrew and name it for the party! I’ve found people that have never tried homebrew will attend the party just to give it a shot. If your having a good size party make sure not to focus on it in the invite, people will think they don’t need to bring supplemental, rather mention it in passing. Folks that appreciate it will see it as an exclamation point.
(2) Get a 5gal keg of your local brewery’s seasonal brew, or something appropriate for a warm day. For the Memorial Day cookout we did Hell’s Belle Belgian Blonde from the Big Boss Brewery. It was perfect. Again, remember to mention this in the invitation, but note that it’s a 5 gal keg. People should know from that that it’s just a supplemental treat. We floated ours in about 3.5 hours, if that helps.
The novelty of trying a friend’s homebrew or celebrating a local brewer will get folks over the possibility that it isn’t their style of brew.

(N+I+T)

The importance of the number of quality invites and a well-crafted invitation isn’t hard to see. Quality invites are people that actually are likely to come, for example don’t invite Britney Spears no matter how desperate she appears in the tabloids… she’s not coming to your party. Well-crafted invites are an art and deserve an entire article to themselves, but generally a well crafted invitation is a very fluid notion defined by the group you are sending to. You will likely be sending the invitation across many different cliques of people of which you are a part. Often these folks don’t know each other so crafting an invitation that is appealing to all of them while being engaging and seeming to speak specifically to them without being off putting to some… yep like I said an article of it’s own. But let’s be honest, even if all of these numbers work it’s the people and the personalities that they bring that truly make a party fun so be selective in planning your list. Remember, in some people’s case, not burdening them with an invitation can be just as nice as inviting them, I’m thinking of Grandma here. The “theme of interest” factor, not unlike the available beverages is just a way to boost numbers. A theme can pull in people that otherwise may not have an interest in attending. For example we threw an Obama fund raising cookout a few weeks back, folks we had met from the campaign came and other friends that were into the political scene, but not so much the partying scene also showed. Of course, as I’m sure you could imagine, a theme could just as easily have a chilling effect to otherwise definite attendees.

(E - P)

Excluding weather, Alternative Events is the only negative by design in the equation. We would not have thrown the cookout if our friends who usually throw the Memorial Day event where doing their thing. It’s easy to avoid this negative, but be sure to do just a bit of research into what else is going on prior to putting your invitation out. Consider major sports events, concerts, your friends birthday calendar, Nostradamus’s predictions for the apocalypse, you know what ever might cause problems for folks. All that having been said, as noted in the equation, the effect of “E” is negated by Previous Success. That is to say if you’re parties rock to the extent that you know people would be totally down witnessing the end of the Earth from one of your backyard bashes then ignore the clashing with the Nostradamous prediction, you’ve got it covered!

That’s it, that’s how it’s done. Go forth and party!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Beer Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.