The 2026 Battle of the Breweries – Rules, Guidelines, Competitors, and General Information

Once again its March and we find ourselves ready for The Battle of the Breweries! Each year I try and do something different with it, and this year is no different. This year we are doing just Pennsylvanian Breweries. Of course, the same rule as always applies – to be in the tournament, it must be a brewery that one of the writers for The Beer Thrillers have visited. (Meaning, a brewery or taproom of the brewery, in Pennsylvania, visited by B. Kline, J. Doncevic, or Paul Kan.) This year’s tournament size is impressive too! Its four conferences of 32 breweries each, for a total of 128 breweries. But wait — theres more! Each conference has a bonus “10 brewery honors” vote. From this group, only one brewery will move on, and they will join the winner of the 1 v 16 to make a triple threat in the second round.

Gotta love a good gimmick! (Paul Heyman taught me that.)

The Battle of the Breweries

We’ve been hosting our version of the NCAA March Madness since 2021. We call it “The Battle of the Breweries”. Its a pretty straightforward tournament, ran similarly to that of the March Madness basketball tournament. The conferences this year are: Atlas, Belma, Cicero, and Dana. (All named after different hop varieties.) (Each year I pick different hop conference names, in the past I’ve done wrestlers for WrestleMania, and other years I’ve done hop varieties.)

Between the three of us we have visited over 200 breweries in Pennsylvania, so we had to limit it down to the tournament size of 128. And I still found that too hard to keep it a great list…. so I added the four honors sections of 10 breweries each, bringing this to a total of 168 competitors. The original 128 were selected for their conferences randomly (I rolled a D4). The ten honors though are mostly end of alphabet breweries. Sorry, tough decisions had to be made with how to select the tournament and to set it up, and my time is very limited (a 50+ hour week job, four daughters, other hobbies, etc.) (I am devoting as much time to this unpaid event as I can, and actually this event as well as maintaining the blog costs me money, so I spend as much time as I can devote to a project that actually costs me money…. don’t tell my accountant.)

Once selected for their conferences, the breweries are then ranked via their Global Average Untappd rating as of 3.1.26. In the case of ties (ex. Brewery A – 3.77 rating and Brewery B – 3.77 rating) I rolled a dice for each brewery to determine the higher seed between the two (or three or four).

Yes I understand this isn’t the most fair tournament, and I also understand the additional 10 breweries were not selected fairly due to the alphabet. But unfortunately, most tournaments and such aren’t fair, and this is meant to be a fun tournament. This isn’t meant to demean or destroy a brewery or to cause fighting or hatred. This is all meant to be in good fun, so please keep it in mind and keep the spirit of it all while participating.

A list of the 168 competitors will follow this article shortly.

Voting

Voting is straight forward and simple. There are four conferences: ATLAS, BELMA, CICERO, and DANA.  Each week, from Monday through Sunday, there will be a voting page for each of the conference. Click on the voting page, open it up, and it will have a pop-down survey poll.

Voting schedule:

• Round of 32 – March 2nd through 8th
• Round of 16 – March 9th through 15th
• Round of 8 – March 16th through 22nd
• Round of 4 – March 23rd through 29th
• Conference Finals: March 30th through April 5th
• Finals Fatal Four Way: April 6th through 19th (Two weeks for the finals)

You can vote daily for each of the conferences, so you can make up to 4 votes (one per conference) per day. Each round will be one week, except for the Finals which will be two weeks. For the Conference Finals I might just make it 1 voting page rather than 4 distinct voting pages. It all depends on what will be easier for the blog’s coding and all that back house stuff.

Tournament Guidelines

We fully encourage everyone to have as much fun as possible with this tournament! Share and comment and talk about the breweries facing off. Upset your favorite brewery isn’t in the tournament? Sorry! It means one of us probably haven’t been there, or they just barely missed our cut when deciding the 256 breweries to include! Social media is a fantastic tool for sharing your brewery or your favorite brewery’s voting page. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tumblr, LinkTree, umm…. MySpace? LinkedIn? Pinterest? What other social medias do you cool young kids use? Whichever it is, feel free to share and bolster and brag about how your brewery is doing or encourage others to vote for your favorite brewery!

Please do keep it all in fun though. This isn’t meant to belittle or demean breweries or to create real animosity. Its a fun light hearted competition in the spirit of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament. So with that in mind please enjoy it!

VOTING LINKS

The following section will be edited over time to include all of the different voting pages and their links. As well as the results pages. Results pages will be done when I have time. Between having four daughters, a girlfriend, a job, and writing for the blog, results pages may not be done immediately. Voting pages will be though.

2026 Battle of the Breweries – Rules, Guidelines, Competitors, and General Information

• The 2026 Battle of the Breweries – Rules, Guidelines, Competitors, and General Information
• The Battle of the Breweries 2026: Competitors List

Good Luck

Once again – good luck to all the breweries involved, and have fun! Be sure to share this page or the direct voting pages for best results.

 

Cheers!

 

-Ben

-The Beer Thrillers