Beer Madness XIII (2024) Recap

Today is the first day of spring, March Madness is on and it’s 75 degrees out.  These are all reasons to celebrate, but they are not the reason for the extra spring in my step today.  That my friends is because tomorrow is Beer Madness XIV.  That’s right, for 14 straight years, even counting through the pandemic I’ve gathered an esteemed panel of friends, neighbors and drunkards to determine the greatest American made craft beer of the year.  It's gone from a one day event, to a day event, to spawning quarterly Beer Majors, to being a double elimination tournament and I can't wait to see what the future holds.  

However, before we can kick Beer Madness XIV off, I need to write the blog post summarizing last years event.  The records of Beer Madness are meticulously maintained in google sheets, old coffee stained paper brackets and of course, this blog.  So grab yourself a cold one, sit down and enjoy my memory challenged retelling of Beer Madness XIII, which was truly an underdog story.  

After Beer Madness XII ended in a tie, we brought on a fifth judge to the panel so that bargaining and negotiating as a tactic would be diminished.  Now in some past years, I’ve started in the early rounds and told the story of Beer Madness in roughly chronological order.  This year however, I’m taking a note from Pulp Fiction and we’re going to start with the end in mind.  The Beer Madness XIII champion was Anchorage Brewing Flesh Wound (4.1/85) provided by Chris M.  (@marrfore.bsky.social).  This was his 3rd win overall and first win since Beer Madness VIII.  Interesting historical fact, all three winning beers were sours.  (Noon Whistle Guava Gose Smack (3.83/90), Pentagram Surly (3.64/92) & Anchorage Flesh Wound).

So what makes this an underdog story?  Well the winning beer lost in the initial round of 16 to Hop Butcher’s Snorkel Squad (4.22/93) in a close 3-2 decision.  This put Flesh Wound in the loser’s bracket really early in the tournament.  For Flesh Wound to get to the finals, it would need to defeat 6 beers, and we would have to not run out of Flesh Wound which is always a risk of losing early.  So let’s review the path to the championship…  This beer:

• Knocked out White Ferrari (4.29/97) by The Veil as Scott  4 to 1 as Scott maniacally laughed as he votes against his own beer.
• Destroyed Schilling’s Karluv 13 (4.08/93) on a 4 to 1 vote, and cinched a place in Day 2.  This is huge as the expanded voting pool that shows up on Sunday (aka The BMWs) is sour friendly.
• Rocketed into Saturday by beating The Answer/Precarious Electrowave (4.16) collab 5 to 1
• Stomped Crooked Run’s Wonder (4.02) 5 to 1 to earn a rematch with…
• Snorkel Squad is now in the loser’s bracket!  It had been barreling up the other side since aforementioned Wonder beat it in the winner’s side.  However, with more judges and a flip-flop Flesh Wound marches on 4-2 getting beervengance along the way! (Total made up word there...)
• Squeaked by Port City Cobblestone (3.66/82) 4-2 in a battle of delightful sours in order to earn a birth in the finals against…

Jester King’s Funkmetal (3.99/93), a barrel aged sour stout.  (Editor’s note: the description makes it sound like Funkmetal should be my favorite beer ever, and I didn’t care for it.  I felt confused and broken which was good prep for 2025…  Alas, I digress.)  

Since I’ve already told you who won, there is no drama at this point, but Flesh Wound beat the previously undefeated Funkmetal by a score of 4-2.  It was an epic run, and I think the first time that a beer had come out of the loser’s bracket since Surly did it back in 2019 (the first year of double elimination).  

The 13th Beer Madness was anything but unlucky as everyone had a good time, and we all lived to tell about it.  As we prep for Beer Madness XIV tomorrow, we wish for good fortune as we battle a cold mid-atlantic spring day and decide if you post about Beer Madness on Bluesky, is anyone listening?  See you with the results in hopefully less than 364 days😊