Beer Madness 2009!

Last night we had our second (annual?) Beer Madness party, an idea we borrowed from the Washington Post's annual March Madness event. The event has a single-elimination bracket of beers, where everyone blindly tastes a shot of each pair head-to-head and then votes for their favorite. The beer with more votes advances to the next round, while the beer with fewer is eliminated. The contestant brews are all secret until they're eliminated.

Last year saw Magic Hat #9 beat out Blue Moon in the championship, with Yuengling and Honey Moon (a Blue Moon seasonal) rounding out the final four. We were embarrassed by Miller Light's strong showing, as well as the trouncing of quality beers like Leffe (but how do you fault blind taste testings?)

This year we expanded our bracket (and judging panel) to 21 beers, and since we asked people to bring beers they actually knew and liked we had no shutouts this year (no more St. Pauli Girl and Longhammer IPA). In fact the fewest votes any beer received was 3, and many rounds were very close. There were plenty of the familiar cries of people voting against their own beers since no one knew exactly what was in each round. Our judges brought a wonderfully wide array of specialty and microbrews so we were all able to taste a number of new kinds.

The winner this year? A tie! And, humorously, between two of the most "common" beers in the bracket, Yuengling and Blue Moon. Rounding out the Final Four were Flying Dog's Old Scratch Amber Lager and Dogfish Head's Raison D'Etra.

Thanks to everyone who came. We had a great time! See the complete results here.