The 2014 Utah Beer Challenge

Two years ago we tried to have a little fun and take advantage of the whole March Madness Bracket bull shit. We pitted the best four beer from sixteen Utah breweries against each other for four weeks to come up with a very non-scientific "Best Beer in Utah". Sadly the results were tainted by a groups of genetic anomalies that had nothing better to do at 3am, so we killed the competition in the last few hours of the finals. It was sad, there was a lot of enthusiastic voting, and everyone from the breweries to the casual beer geek got involved.

The Interwebs is full of anonymous assholes, we all know this, and there nothing we can really do about them. So after weeks of racking my tiny brain, I've decided to try and resurrect the Utah Beer Challenge once again. Due to my limited budget of "nothing", I've been scouring the web for a free polling service that hides the results from voters until the voting has ended - I think I've found one that'll work. Hopefully, this will discourage any cheating.

Before I get to the rules and how I came up with breweries and beers, I will state right now that I will reserve the right to alter any voter outcome that I deem to have tampered with. Many votes will come in from a single IP address, I get that - but when I start to notice a flood of cookie resets and odd hour multiple votes, I'll start making adjustments. Social media and P.R. representatives of the competing breweries, please feel free to encourage your "friends of the brewery" to enthusiastically participate. Just ask them to please keep the crazy in check. On to the Challenge!

There are currently 25 places in Utah that fall under the category of brewery/brewpub some contract to have their beers made while others are brewpub chains that don't manufacture here, but sell beer around the state. Brewpubs that fall into these categories I've decided to omit this year. It has nothing to do with the quality of the beer it just comes down to simple math. 16 breweries x top 4 beers = 64 bracket spots.

Some of the breweries have more than one entity. These entities will be lumped into one brewery except for Wasatch and Squatters - who both have a long independent histories before their companies merged.  

I took the current crop of existing manufacturing breweries and grabbed their top four beers as listed by ratebeer.com's database. These beers will be randomly selected to go head to head in round one. This has proven to be tough because some peoples finalist contenders have ended up facing each other right off the bat as well as having one brewery's beers go up against each other. There is no fair way (within reason) to identify seeds for all of these beers.

The rules are simple. Two days to vote in each single elimination round. Vote for your favorite beers in the column to the right. I will post a bracket at the end of each round to help you keep score.

The first round will be broken up into four parts with two days of voting each.
The second round will be broken up into four parts with two days of voting each.
The third round will be broken up into two parts with two days of voting
The fourth round will be broken up into two parts with two days of voting
The Semifinals will consist of two days of voting
The Finals will consist of two days of voting

Voting for Part One of Round 1 will begin 4/2/14 at 5am and will end 5am 4/4/14. Any questions?
No, this is not an April Fool's Joke.

Cheers!