Bracketology - The Beer Thrillers

The Battle of the Beers – Round of 4 (2022)

B. Kline — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 16:05:00 +0000

The Battle of the Beers (2022) Continues With the Final Four

It’s the Final (….four)…. Count Down

Its the final four…. count down. Four flagship beers remain. Four breweries who brewed those flagship beers remain. They hail from all parts of… well… the United States, and they have all entered into this gladiator pit (pretty much unwillingly, I kind of just picked them, threw them in there, and you guys voted on them like a bunch of Roman Emperors, determining who survives and who doesn’t). But anyway, these fine gladiators come here to duke it out, and see who goes on to our finals next week.

Yes, that means its the Final Four! And basically the semi finals of the tournament! The four breweries that remain are:

The Alchemist (from Stowe, Vermont)
Toppling Goliath (from Decorah, Iowa)
Von C Brewing (from Norristown, Pennsylvania)
Troegs Independent Craft Brewing (from Hershey, Pennsylvania)

The Final Four Competitors

Its interesting to note the final four that we have. The Alchemist and Toppling Goliath are giants in the feed, well known from across the country. Troegs Independent Craft Brewing is a regional staple in the eastern area with a decently large distribution footprint – especially well known in Pennsylvania (its the second largest brewery in the state), and there is the little David in this fight – Von C Brewing out of Norristown, PA. Who have been on a hot streak, as a new brewery, wracking up wins and records all over the place. The biggest – as far as we are concerned here at The Beer Thrillers – is they won this year’s Battle of the Breweries (2022). You can see their win here: And the Winner Is….. (2022).

So this is certainly a heated up final four. Two industry giants and favorites, a brewery that is a regional giant and is celebrating their 25th anniversary, and a brewery just over a year old that keeps winning awards and medals left and right. So who becomes the true winner? We shall see! You guys will decide!

Who Did We Lose?

Who did we lose and that didn’t make it from the Elite Eight to the Final Four? (Because sadly, somebody’s bottle has to be broken.) They were:

(14) Rotunda Brewing Company – Annville IPA
(23) Tattered Flag – TMI PA
(3) Lawson’s Finest Liquids – Sip of Sunshine
(11) Rubber Soul Brewing Company – Dropout

How Did They Get Here?

How did we get here with these brewed gladiators? Check out these other pages of the tournament to find out:

Voting

The remaining schedule of voting for the tournament goes as such:

Round of 4: July 22nd – July 28th at 11:59PM (EST)
Round of 2: July 29th – August 4th at 11:59PM (EST)

You can vote daily, so be sure to bookmark and come back and vote each day. Also be sure to share this post on all of your different social media platforms to get your friends and fans to vote as well.

So let’s vote:

[perfect_survey id=”9550″]

Things Are Certainly Heating Up

And I don’t just mean the temperature – which it is that too (it has been a scorcher of a week here in Central PA). But we are down to the Final Four of the tournament, so we have just two rounds left. This week and next week’s finals heads up matchup. Who will walk away top dog / top beer / top whatever? You guys will decide!

Wrap Up

Thank you all for checking out the results and participating in the tournament. This is our first Battle of the Beers tournament, but our third tournament overall (after having done a Battle of the Breweries (2021) and a Battle of the Breweries (2022)). These are a lot of fun to run and manage, and its great to see the participation of the fans and community. So I just want to thank everyone for coming to The Beer Thrillers blog and participating in the tournament. You guys make all this happen and without you there would be no tournaments or The Beer Thrillers in general. So we greatly appreciate all your support and everything.

Lots and Lots and Lots and Lots Going On

There is always lots and lots and lots and lots going on here at The Beer Thrillers. Please check out the site, look at all the different articles by numerous writers (myself – B. Kline, Josh – J. Doncevic, Default Brewing, Karl’s great homebrewing article, Amy’s articles, etc.). With us being halfway through the year, we have a new slew of content that is out, or is coming out shortly (list articles and the such), so be on the lookout for that. Also the layout should soon be getting a change, so that will hopefully make the site look nicer. (Excuse the dust while we work.)

There is always beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, and news so always be checking back to see that. Also look for upcoming podcasts, and even YouTube videos soon. And if you check out our Facebook page, you’ll see that I occasionally do live video game streaming with our friend Drew over at Knights of Nostalgia.

Thanks For Reading

Thank you all so very much for participating in the tournament! Hope your having as much of a blast in it as we are running it here! Try and stay cool and drink some good beers on this hot day!

Cheers!

-B. Kline

As always, thank you everyone for reading! Leave your likes, comments, suggestions, questions, etc, in the comments section. Or use the Feedback – Contact Us – page, and we’ll get right back to you! You can also reach out to us at our direct e-mail address: thebeerthrillers@gmail.com

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You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.

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The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #7 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #9 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. Thank you!

The Battle of the Beers – Round of 8 (2022)

B. Kline — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 13:00:31 +0000

The Round of 8 of The Battle of the Beers (2022)

We’re Moving On

The competition is slimming down again, getting hardened by steel and flint, and moving on. The victorious are once again trudging into battle whilst the defeated head home with their heads low – some on the backs of their shields, spears across their chest.

That’s right, we’re now onto the next round and stage of The Battle of the Beers. We’ve gone from 32 competitors to 16, and now to 8. The battle is beginning to really heat up as we start getting closer and closer to the true champion.

Might this all be hyperbole? 100%…. but either way ‘ya’ gotta love it as we forge on in this great testament of will and power and hop and barley and malt!

So let’s see who all is left!

The Final 8 Competitors

So let’s see who these tried and true, tested and vetted warriors of the Beer Gladiator Pits are:

The Alchemist (with Heady Topper)
Rotunda Brewing (with Annville IPA)
Tattered Flag (with TMI PA)
Toppling Goliath (with Pseudo Sue)
Lawson’s Finest Liquids (with Sip of Sunshine)
Von C Brewing (with Walking on Clouds)
Rubber Soul (with Dropout)
Troeg’s Brewing (with Perpetual IPA)

How Did They Get Here

How did we get here with these brewed gladiators? Check out these other pages of the tournament to find out:

The Battle of the Beers (2022)
The Battle of the Beers – Round of 32 (Voting) (2022)
The Battle of the Beers – Round of 32 (Results – Recap) (2022)
The Battle of the Beers – Round of 16 (Voting) (2022)
The Battle of the Beers – Round of 16 (Results – Recap) (2022)
The Battle of the Beers – Round of 8 (Voting) (2022)

Remaining Weeks of Voting

The remaining voting schedule is as such:

Round of 8: July 15th – July 21st at 11:59PM (EST)
Round of 4: July 22nd – July 28th at 11:59PM (EST)
Round of 2: July 29th – August 4th at 11:59PM (EST)

Rules

The rules are relatively simple. Each day you can vote (so make sure you come back daily to vote), just open up this article and go through the voting block clicking on the beers you want to win. You can share and post this on your various social medias to help the beers you want to win. (In fact…. I highly recommend you share this article as often and in as many places as possible. Hell, even post a screenshot of it on your library’s community board… why not?!)

Enough Yammering…. Lets Vote!

Alright, alright, I hear ya… enough yammering. Let’s get right down to it and vote:

[perfect_survey id=”9507″]

Remember – you can vote daily. So be sure to come back and keep voting!

Blog Update

There’s been quite some news here for us at The Beer Thrillers. Amy and I are expecting our first daughter (together) (I have three daughters with my ex – wife). She is due in November.

But we do have lots of stuff on the lookout. We are still working on getting the podcast set up and to go live (or recorded) with that soon. We are also looking at getting a new layout for the blog, that will hopefully look a lot nicer, be smoother, and easier to use.

We also have some great new articles I am hoping that will be all dropping in the next few days – including a few brewery reviews / visits as well as getting some beer reviews done (I know its been a little bit of a while), as well as several news articles. We also have some big articles that will be dropping as well. (Also, hope you all like ‘list’ articles, because we have several with it being the halfway point of the year. I know a lot of blogs and pages are doing similar, and we’ve decided to follow suit. So, hopefully that will rank up there with some stuff you all will enjoy.) Lots of these should be up now, or up in the near future. As well as several articles about the US Beer Open Competition. (Like Wallenpaupack Brewing’s two gold medals, Wolf Brewing’s one gold medal, and Sun King Brewery winning Grand National.)

Amy is also transitioning to her new job, so she is a bit busy, but will be getting back into the flow here at TBT – HQ (The Beer Thrillers HQ…. like I said…. name in progress.)

But thank you all for all the continued support you are showing us here at the blog and our social medias. It really means a lot. We just hit 2K followers on Facebook and we’ve been hovering right around 500 followers on Instagram. So thank you all very much for following us! We appreciate all the love and support so very very very very much!

As always, we are looking to grow, expand, and innovate here at The Beer Thrillers. These tournaments are a blast to run, and I hope everyone is enjoying them just as much as we are hosting them. We are always on the lookout for writers as well and other people who would like to become involved with The Beer Thrillers, if you are interested, you can contact us directly at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com and we will get back to you.

Thanks for reading!

Thanks For Reading

Once again – as always – thanks for reading. I hope you are enjoying the tournament, as well as the wrap up and heads up on the state of the blog. (Some of that was copy and pasted from the Round of 32 post, but it holds true all the same.) Lots of stuff going on here at the blog, both behind the scenes, and in front of your screens. So keep your eyeballs peeled… well… that just sounds nasty… whatever… just stay on the lookout!

This tournament has been a blast so far, and I hope you are all enjoying it as well. Keep voting and sharing! We are coming down to the wire, lets see who wins our first Annual Battle of the Beers!

Cheers All!

-B. Kline

You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.

The Battle of the Beers (2022) – Round of 32

B. Kline — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 14:41:34 +0000

The Battle of the Beers – 2022

Welcome to the Opening Round

Welcome everyone to my newest idea here on the blog. Inspired by the March Madness tournament I’ve done the past two years, I’ve decided to try and do a similar single bracket tournament for “flagship beers”. We all pretty much know what flagship beers are – the beer we most associate with a brewery. Their full year release beer, the one you can find anywhere (if you can find that brewery distributed), the one everyone has most likely had from that brewery, etc, etc. So I decided I would take 32 flagship beers from 32 different breweries, and throw them into a heads up competition.

What could be more fun in the slow (for beer blogging anyway) summer months here at The Beer Thrillers?!

The Selection Process

The selection process is mostly arbitrary (welcome to the world of The Beer Thrillers). Generally, there were a few simple rules I followed:

It had to be a beer I’ve had before
It had to have at least a 3 star rating on Untappd
I tried to pick some well known – nation wide distributed beers, some local breweries (local to us here at The Beer Thrillers), and a few “high end” / “high quality” / “top of the line” brewery flagships.

This is clearly not a list of beers based on any kind of science. This is purely meant for fun and just to have a good time. Please leave all feelings and egos at the door.

The Rules

The rules are quite simple, and they follow pretty much the same guideline as how I did the Battle of the Breweries. This is a 32 beer tournament bracket. Straight bracket, no reseeding after each round. The beers were ranked by their Untappd rating as of last night. In the cases where the beers had the same rating, I flipped a coin to determine which would be the higher seed.

There is no conferences, divisions, etc. – its just one simple straight 32 beer bracket.

As I stated in yesterday’s “heads up” blog post about this: The Battle of the Beers (2022) Tournament.

The rules are pretty simple, every week the tournament bracket will be posted. You go down the line up of heads up matches and pick the beers you like. You can vote once per day. Make sure to share on your social media platforms to try and help the beer / breweries you want to win.

The voting schedule is:

Round of 32: July 1st – July 7th at 11:59PM (EST)
Round of 16: July 8th – July 14th at 11:59PM (EST)
Round of 8: July 15th – July 21st at 11:59PM (EST)
Round of 4: July 22nd – July 28th at 11:59PM (EST)
Round of 2: July 29th – August 4th at 11:59PM (EST)

Beers and Breweries Involved

Ok, before we get to the voting, since this is the first round, lets see who all is involved!

Below is a straight list of the 32 breweries with their flagship beers, with their Untappd rating, and the order they are ranked in the tournament:

The Alchemist – Headdy Topper (4.54)
Tree House – Green (4.43)
Lawson’s Finest Liquids – Sip of Sunshine (4.33)
Toppling Goliath – Pseudo Sue (4.13)
New Holland – Dragon’s Milk (4.06)
Dewey Beer – Swishy Pants (4.05)
Omnegang – Three Philosophers (3.95)
Bell’s Brewery – Two Hearted Ale (3.95)
Von C Brewing – Walking on Clouds (3.94)
Cigar City – Jai Alai (3.93)
Rubber Soul – Dropout (3.92)
Pizza Boy – Murren River (3.91)
Deschutes – Fresh Squeezed (3.91)
Rotunda Brewing – Annville IPA (3.9)
Hemauer Brewing – Lucky Lobster (3.89)
Dogfish Head – 60 Minute (3.85)
Boneshire Brew Works – Green Machine (3.8)
Troegs Independent Craft Brewing – Perpetual IPA (3.8)
RAR Brewing – Nanticoke Nectar (3.8)
Bunnyman Brewing – Pink Nightmare (3.78)
Victory – Golden Monkey (3.75)
Laguinitas – IPA (3.72)
Tattered Flag – TMI PA (3.71)
Rogue – Dead Guy Ale (3.71)
Founder’s – All Day IPA (3.7)
Zero-Day Brewing – Mango Habanero (3.69)
Snitz Creek Brewery – Blueberry Cream Ale (3.68)
Sierra Nevada – Pale Ale (3.63)
Moo – Duck Brewery – Hoppy Toad IPA (3.58)
New Belgium – Fat Tire (3.58)
Yuengling – Lager (3.49)
Newcastle – Brown Ale (3.39)

Ok, thats the list of them all. You can see there’s a wide variety of big distributed beers, local to Central PA beers, some high quality high end beers, and some easier to get, obvious lower tier beers.

Lets get to voting!

Voting

Ok, lets get to voting, and let the fun and games begin! You can vote once per day per location. Please be sure to share on social media platforms this page to let others vote in the tournament as well. This should be a lot of fun!

[perfect_survey id=”9437″]

Good luck to the breweries and to the beers and may the best beer win!

Thanks For Reading

I always like to end each blog post saying how I’d like to thank everyone for checking out the page and for reading. You can find all of our links to the right (for now) and to check out some of our newest articles by our different writers. Amy, Josh, Karl, Andy, myself, and past writers like AJ and the guest posts, offer a large sampling of articles to read from. We also have beer reviews, brewery reviews, brewery news, local articles, travelogues, beer fest news, brew fest activities and events, hike reviews, book reviews, brewer interviews, and soon podcasts. We are working on a new layout for the page, so things may look different in the future, but the articles will still all be here.

You can even bookmark this page or the individual page you want and come back for more later!

Thank you all very very very much for reading and sharing. It really means a lot to us!

Cheers!

-B. Kline

You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.