OT: Vote for Founders in the Craft Brewery Mythical National Championship
Tonight Founders takes on Four Peaks brewing out of Arizona, who somehow took out Dogfish Head to make the finals. Currently Four Peaks is leading 50.5% to 49.5% Voting ends at midnight.
http://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/the-best-craft-breweries-in-america
What a travesty it would be if this championship were won by a brewery in freakin' Arizona.
I voted four peaks for the sole reason of wanting to see a 13 seed win it all
Voted...however, this bracket is rediculous. Pipeworks is better than Belle's? I don't think so
and its not even close. maybe the fact that pipeworks is super local and you dont get a lot of their stuff changes things for you, but pipeworks is crushing bells, and founders tbh.
"Belle's"
I guess I can go ahead and do my part. How many votes do you think will seal the deal? It's apparent by the previous rounds that one or both of these brewerys are using bots.
(Well I gave them about 250k votes and all I could do is get it down to about .10%. At around 11 PM they must have turned it up, because I couldn't keep up without using 4 or 5 servers.)
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This is, what, #5 in the Planet Series, and exactly two of them have been good...
I was was geeked to try Mercury, and I was so disappointed, I never followed up with what styles the next planets were trying to go for. Granted I'm not a Belgian fan, so if that theme continued, then I would probably not like any of them.
Mars was fantastic, and Jupiter is getting good reviews. Venus was supposedly horrific (didn't get to try it), and Mercury was rather meh.
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When the folks at BeerAdvocate are essentially using Venus as a substitute for all that is wrong in the world... It has nothing to do with bottling vs. draft--the consensus seems to be it was a simply bad effort.
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Has anyone tried Founders Blushing Monk? It's a little expensive, but I thought it was really great. Reminded me of New Glarus Rasberry Tart.
I put in my vote, though I'm not necessarily convinced that Founders should have made it past New Glarus in the second round.
I thought blushing monk was good but was a little similar to Shorts soft parade
And I don't like it at all. And I like a LOT of what Founders puts out. I certainly won't get too worked up about your preferences though.
I may be in the minority, but Founders beer is incredibly overrated. Seems like a typical product that is overhyped by the people of Grand Rapids for self validation purposes.
Still good, but not anywhere close to the hype. I voted for Four Peaks
and he's still a loser.
Then tell me they are overrated. Bells on the other hand, is overrated.
Bell's Hopslam is the best beer I've ever tried(and I've had a ton, but admittedly only had all of the major west coast micros). There is nothing from Founders that comes remotely close to Hopslam. I'd say that Bells has three beers that are better than the best Founders.
Feel free to voice your opinion on the beer, but Founder's isn't successful becayse it's overhyped by the people of Grand Rapids. In 2013, Founders was the 26th best selling craft brewery in the nation and it doesn't sell to much of the country (and sold to even less in 2013 when those numbers were tallied). Grand Rapids is certainly not big enough or influential enough to achieve that.
I was recently in Tulsa, OK on business. I went to a bar that sold a couple Founder's varieties and the bartender said they were the best selling beers they had on top (the only sold microbrews). i'm sure it wasn't all the Grand Rapidians in Tulsa buying it out.
Feel free to say you don't think it's as good as other people do, but to say that Founder's is nationally popular simply because of the opinions of Grand Rapidians is giving my hometown way more credit than it deserves. But I appreciate it nonetheless.
the size, influence and enthusiasm of Grand Rapids and the state Michigan (and it's many transplants). Michigan is the 8th largest state (maybe 9th now after NC?) in the country, far bigger than Oregon and Colorado, which are two of the other comparable beer states along with California. Dogfish Head is in Delaware fergodsakes, Allagash is in Maine. Those are not big local markets. Kent county alone has more residents than each of those states.
There's a reason that when Brewdogs filmed in GR, the hosts were blown away by attendence that dwarfed any other episode. People in MI are really whheeeeeeee! about MI beer right now, and it's having a relatively large impact on sales that are relatively concentrated on it's top 2 breweries (Founder's and Bell's). And yes, many think Russian River, Lagunitas and Stone are overrated thanks to being in CA, but the MI breweries enjoy a population advantage over many of the other top breweries.
First of all - Kent County does not have more people than Maine or Delaware.
Second of all - the success of Founder's is negligibly related to the population of Grand Rapids. GR is not a big city. I have many biases toward GR (I grew up there, my family still lives there) but give Founder's some credit. They have experienced success by making good, unique beers.
I know people in Michigan, West Michigan specifically, are very high on their local beer, as they should be. But the poster above said that Founder's was success was due to GR folks overrating it, and that's just not true. Amway didn't become successful by selling soap in GR and Steelcase didn't become successful selling chairs in only West Michigan. You don't become a successful company in GR by selling to GR residents alone. Founder's is successful because they make a good product.
Yes, you're right about Kent county. What I meant was the GR metro area which is larger than Delaware and larger than Maine if you count the statistical area including Holland and Muskegon. I'm from GR, and lived there until I left for Ann Arbor when I was 18 and my entire family still lives there so I go back all the time.
The poster of your response did not say that Founder's "success" (your words) was due to Grand Rapidians, just that it is overhyped by Grand Rapidians, and there's probably some truth to that. To my point, people in MI are crazy about their local craft beer to the point where they vote GR beer city USA, and they vote Founder's number one in polls like the one the OP posted. Founders makes a good product, but it is probably not the best brewery in America as it was voted by the voters of this poll. I definitely don't think they're "incredibly overhyped" as the poster stated, but they do end up rated too highly when volume of clicks and ratio of people willing to give 5 stars out of 5 is the criteria.
And commercial success isn't a very good measure of beer quality either, obviously. If it was, we'd just conclude that Sam Adam's, Sierra Nevada, and Shock Top are the best craft breweries and call it a day. Distibution (which is a weird game) has a lot to do with it. The great thing is, all that matters is what each individual drinker appreciates.
so basically any reasonable metro has more people than Delaware. To see your metro has more people than Delaware is more an indication of how tiny DE is vs. how influential your city is
Delaware is tiny, GR and MI are not. GR metro area is the 43rd largest in the country. That is not small or insignificant at all. That's larger than the largest metro area in about half the states. It's the same size as New Orleans, bigger than Oklahoma City and Buffalo which have pro sports teams and certainly feel bigger. MI is a top 10 population state. So no, GR isn't getting too much credit for it's ability to be "influential", which in this context is only about it's ability to come out in droves to vote on beer polls, which is driven by a sizable population and a relatively high percentage of us getting on board to vote for anything we can be proud of about our state so the rest of the country doesn't just think of MI as being the state with Detroit: murder capital of the country.
This isn't a knock, it's a great thing. We love our state and like to support things about it (as evidenced by this post on a completely unrelated blog), and there is an undeniable tendency amongst us Michiganders to hype (possibly overhype) the good things about this state in an effort to offset all the overly publicized bad things about the state.
Agree on stone and lagunitas, but how many people have you met that think Russian River is "overrated"? thats ridiculous.
LOTS of people think Pliny is overrated. And they're probably right. That was more my point. Beers and breweries alike can get "overrated" on polls that merely require volume of clicks. I don't think anyone could possibly think Russian River is overrated because it is AMAZING.
Founders isn't just popular based on popular vote though. Look at the ratings of their beers on Beer Advocate, and look at essentially every top ten list of breweries which is not determined by a popular vote. I bet you'll see Founders on there.
are popular vote. It's the yelp of beer. It's interesting that since Founders has become more widely distributed, it's beers have come down on the beer advocate list, which might indicate the non-MI drinkers are rating them with less bias. I aslo think there are just a lot more great breweries now than there were even 5 years ago so some newer beers have shot up the list.
I think Founders could be argued as a top 10 US brewery, and its 4 seed on this bracket is arguably well deserved. But to win the whole thing as the top brewery in the country, that's overrated.
I incidently just looked up a top ten list on Men's Health (first one in a google search) and Founder's was not ranked by the article author. I hate to discount every measure of quality but top ten lists that are trying to get clicks will tend to rank breweries more likely to get clicks and shares over more obscure breweries. Kind of like football recruiting rankings tend to bias towards the kids that commit to the big schools whose fanbases will obsess about the rankings that the services are selling so top lists by a publication selling clicks come with a grain of salt too.
All that matters is our own opinions though, and everyone is entitled to his/her own. That's what's fun about beer right now (like sports), these kinds of arguments.
It's popular, and for good reason. I haven't tried a Founders that I don't like yet.
I like Founders... but there are easily half a dozen better breweries in Michigan.
...and Founders can't even compete with Full Sail (somehow not even a contestant) and Deschutes.
The wonderful thing about beer is everyone has different preferences in taste and thus will compare breweries differently. I've tried some full sail, and yeah it was good, but it didn't blow me away. I just like Founders more.
I'll take Odd Sides, New Holland, Arcadia, Shorts, and Bells all over Founders... and those are just Michigan breweries.
For Oregon beers I'll take Full Sail, Deschutes, and Bridgeport over Founders.
... I appreciate this tournament in that in promotes craft breweries, but with the recent boom in the art, it is an impossible task to find the best 64. Guess these are the best 64 that have a national distribution.
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Obviously, I'm taking this thing way too seriously, but it does seem like someone put in a lot of work on something that provides no meaningful information to us beer drinkers.
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