Beer Tournament

First of all, brilliant idea. I like the 'region' brackets being made according to style more so than actual geographical locations of breweries. It would seem more in line of true tournament-'style,' in regard to beer. Either way, prost!

 

The only difficulty would appear to be somehow narrowing down beer styles into only 4 regions - especially if you give both stouts and BA stouts each their own. For what it's worth, I would go with IPA, stout, sour, and barlewine regions; if for nothing else, because they simply seem to be the most common/popular/recognizable/ and most importantly, distinguishable styles.

 

Cool idea. Yeah I would go with the style brackets opposed to geographical location. Even people who love every style have some sort of preferences or biases, and I think a Final 4 of 4 different styles is cooler than a (possible) final 4 of all of the same style.

 

So...Heady=Duke

 

Way too much time on your hands.

 

I would certainly break it up via style, not geographical. That way you aren't comparing stouts with IPAs, or sours and barleywines, etc. etc. except for the more final rounds. It just seems like there is a bit of an area there to be biased. I know for me, I would move on just about every stout over other styles just because that's what I prefer. So removing this bias would be pretty interesting. The difficult part I think would be allocating 16 of each style, since you couldn't really have 25 stouts, and 8 sours, because the brackets wouldn't work.

I like the idea though. I'd certainly follow this bracket if you follow up with it.

 

A buddy of mine has run something like this for the past 5+ years. It's a lot of fun. We use 32 beers and the brackets are organized by style, as it seems many are in favor of. We end up splitting the whole tournament into 3 nights. Right side, left side, then final four and leftovers for the last night. The best part is circling around the leftover stash on the last night for take homes! Usually ends up being 8 or so bottles per person.

 

I believe that observation holds true for roughly 90% of the folks on this site.

That being said, a couple buddies and I did something similar last year. But only 16 entries (64 seemed overwhelming) and strictly [relatively] easily obtainable IPA/IIPA's, with seeding based on BA scores. It was fun for sure. Sucks took the title over Dirtwolf if I remember correctly.

 

I think a tournament based on blind tasting is best; eliminates potential bias from the equation and results in not only a true "winner" but probably a LOT more surprises.

 

Im not participating in this shit, because at the end of the day, its really just gonna end up being a mix of 64 IPAs and stouts and not necessarily a true "beer" tournament.

 

I do that with albums. Great to see someone as geeky as me.

If I did it with beer I'd probably do style regions.

 

A local beer bar (ITap) did that for March Madness this past spring. They broke it up into 4 categories including light vs. dark and Missouri-only. They had nearly all of the beers on the list on tap throughout March Madness so you could get a taste of all of them and crown your winner!

 

This has taken a lot more time that one should have available. That being said, I want to do this now.

I agree with making "style regions," but good luck narrowing them down to 4.

 

Go into it looking for some fun (and enlightenment) rather than crowning a beer "winner."