Now’s your last chance to vote in the Final Four matchups of the Tournament of Beer. The matchups end at noon, with the week-long championship match set to begin immediately after. Go vote and decide which beer is the best in the land…
I voted. Looks like the black and tan crowd are going for it. I still think that if you gave it the one beer on a deserted island test, you’d come up with something other than Guinness.
Thanks for the reminder. I’m a bit disappointed that my current fave Red Hook ESB didn’t make the final four, but I did have Bass Ale in my office pool, so all hope is not lost.
Okay, maybe you all know this one, but I feel like telling it for those who don’t
HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN BY DRINKING BEER
- When you drink you get drunk.
- When you get drunk you go to sleep.
- When you sleep you commit no sin.
- When you commit no sin you go to Heaven
SO LET’S ALL DRINK BEER AND GO TO HEAVEN!
It seems sort of unfair to have it come down to these two. It’s like the flagship for stout drinkers vs. the flagship of the ale drinkers. There’s virtually no common ground for comparison.
Personally, I thought Sam Adams should have beaten Bass. I don’t like the lighter beers as much, but I think China Guy is probably right about the desert island thing. I’m so conflicted. Hey, do you think I could just vote for “beer” and be done with it?
Both Bass and Guinness are ales. Ale refers to the fermentation process and includes Pale Ales, IPAs, Stouts, Porters, Mild Ales, Bitters, ESBs, Scottish Ales, and many others. The other type is Lager, which includes Pilsner, Munich-style larger, Oktoberfest, American light lagers (Bud, Miller, Coors) and others.
Bass is the flagship for Pale Ales. The red triangle logo of Bass is the oldest trademarked logo in England.
I think the most serious omissions from the tournament was Pilsner Urquell and Budweiser Budvar, the real Beer of Kings. I don’t think the lagers really had a chance in this because of these without either of these beers. That said, however, I would have been pulling for the Guinness anyway.
I’m actually kinda shocked Bass made it to the finals. I love the stuff, one of my favorite beers, but I kinda thought it might bow out to Sam Adams or perhaps Murphy’s before that…
Pilsner Urquell was close, but eliminated at the last second. Must have been the weak rpi rating. No, all kidding aside, it was very difficult to pick the 64 beers that made it into the tournament. Others had posted in an earlier thread about some beers they thought should have also been included. If we could have fit them all in, we would’ve…lord knnows we love them all. However, there were several factors that went into choosing the ones we did:
- Taste, obviously.
- Name Brand recognition. Some of those that are in there that we all know are crap had to be on the list simply because people would recognize them, and they might garner more of a popular vote. That being said, we only took one beer each from every major label. So, whereas Coors Extra Gold made the list, Coors Light did not.
- Sentimental favorites with the creators of Beerseye. Though this had more to do with seedings than with which beers actually made the cut. Thus, the relatively high seedings of High Life and Beast Ice.
Anyway, it’s been a pretty interesting tournament so far. We’re looking to think of new ideas for tournaments, such as, perhaps, biggest party schools (we may have conference tournaments as well for that one.) and China Guy’s suggestion earlier of the “Stranded on a Deserted Island Beer.”
Man, I knew I’d be getting in over my head sticking my nose into this thread. Well, you learn something new every day. Thanks for showing me the light, Homebrew. I’m surprised to learn that Bass has more in common with Guiness than with Bud.
So, outside of the fermentation process, what are the main differences between ales and lagers? As in taste, color, texture etc. The other night at the BADope I had a pint of Drake’s Expedition, which was fabulous. Now I’m coming up with all these other questions for the experts (why are Hefeweizens, my favorite beers, cloudy? What is a Hefeweizen?), so maybe you could just refer me to your favorite beer reference site? I’ve already been browsing through the Beerseye pages. Great stuff.
White Lightning…isn’t beer fascinating?! 
Ales and Lagers are fermented at different temperatures. Ales generally have a more sophisticated and profound flavor than the lagers do, while lagers are typically smoother (there are, of course, exceptions to these generalizations.)
The lager family consists of almost all the macrobrews that are popular in the U.S. Bud, Busch, Labatt, Coors, etc. are all Pilsner lagers. The original Pilsners brewed in Europe were much more flavorful than the ones that are macro-brewed in the U.S. I believe I read somewhere that 90% of beers consumed around the world are lagers.
I prefer ales myself though, which is not to say that there aren’t some lagers that I love as well. There are so many different kinds of ales, it’d take quite sometime to list them all. Among them are stouts (Guinness, Murphy’s), porters (Samuel Smith makes a great one), lambics (delicious fruity belgian beers), pale ales (such as one of my favs, Sierra Nevada), etc. etc. I learned most of this stuff in a beverage management elective course I took up at Penn State…needless to say, it was the best course I ever took there! Homebrew, you’re very knowledgable when it comes to this stuff, so if I’ve gotten anything wrong here, please let me know.
I don’t know a whole lot about the hefeweizens…had a great deal of them though. Good stuff. I know that they’re also part of the ale family (I believe they’d be found in the Wheat Beer classification) and brewed in either germany or austria.
Anyway, we hope to get a lot of this information up on Beerseye soon. Thanks for visiting the site…hope you stop back soon.