The MYSTERY INGREDIENT Challenge
Cattle Battle is back for 2026! And this year, we’ve changed things up. We will ship you our mystery ingredient that must be paired with PEACHES. That’s right, this year’s Cattle Battle is a peach-and-mystery-ingredient mead. You’ll have until November 30th to register and the mystery ingredient packages will be shipped out the following week.
How it works
Mead Stampede organizers will brew up a special batch of mead featuring the MYSTERY ingredient. And here’s the challenge: we’ll ship you the mystery ingredient, which you must use in a peach mead – trying your best to guess what the Cattle Battle Challenge mead tastes like. Whichever entry gets the closest in flavor to the official brew will be declared the winner!
This category is open to all entrants and will be judged with a standard score sheet. However, only the mead CLOSEST in flavor to our official brew will be the winner!
How to play
Register using the button below and pay $10. That $10 fee will be credited to you when you register your Cattle Battle entry (so you will not have to pay for that entry twice – we’ll keep track). Then, the first week of December, packages including the mystery ingredient will be shipped out to all participants. Brew up your mead, then register a Cattle Battle entry in April when our competition entries open up. We’ll make sure your Cattle Battle entry is not charged twice. It’s that easy!
Please note that, when communicating with you around Cattle Battle, your PayPal email address will be used (since that’s what we get when you pay). Cattle Battle participants will receive communications from us directly via MailChimp.