Beer Fame

For the past few years, Realbeer.com has held a "Battle of the Beers" to recognize the best American beer. They do an NCAA-tourney format, with 64 beers facing off two beers each time, with the winner, as determined by a popularity contest, advancing to the next round. They only have one beer per brewery, and there's plenty of arbitrariness in which beers are selected. In addition, certain breweries have "stuffed the ballot" by sending out e-mail to those on their mailing lists to vote for their beers. That being said, their contest generates interest in craft brews and breweries, and so overall I think it's a good thing.

This year, it turns out that RateBeer.com is working with them, in that each pairing includes links to RateBeer for the competing beers, where you can see the overall rating of each beer, and the five ratings from the sitemembers with the most ratings (if #3 hasn't tried the beer, #6 is included, etc.). As the site's #5 rater, and the rater with the most ratings of American beers, I appear there a lot (argo0, same as this site). Today, for instance, for the eight beers competing, the ratebeer link takes you to my ratings seven times. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing -- is my mother proud?