Narrowing the Field

Welcome back to BeerHappens exclusive coverage of the 2008 Ale-ympics! In yesterday’s action, we saw Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Japan, and Mexico get eliminated from the competition, leaving us with today’s six Medal Round teams ready to duke it out and go for gold.

It’s a tough competition, but here’s how I see it playing out:

6. United States
Original Style: 5, Individual Beer: 10, Culture: 2
Total = 17

The best original style I selected for this is the California Common (a.k.a. steam beer). All the other “American beers” are really just knock-offs of older, better European styles. Steam beers are a solid entry but, while they represent a creative brewing achievement, the end product has never really blown me away in terms of taste. Anchor Steam is very good beer, but it doesn’t have that “Wow!” quality of some of the other styles we’ll get to later.

For the individual beer competition, I’m going to put forward my personal favorite, Shipyard’s Pumpkinhead. I’ve gushed about this beer a few too many times now, so I won’t go into it here, but if you’ve never had it, go pick up a six-pack when it hits the shelves in a couple weeks.

The American team really stumbles when we get to the culture category. The overarching U.S. beer paradigm is “Buy something cheap then drink a lot of it because being drunk is fun.” Overall, there’s a pretty strong argument that America has hurt beer culture more than it has contributed. Granted, we’ve been turning things around a bit recently, but until we get rid of this image, I can’t give the U.S. more than a 2.

5. Belgium
Original Style: 7, Individual Beer 9, Culture 7
Total = 23

The Belgians moved up and down in my rankings but in the end, I do think this is right spot for them. The original style competing is going to have to be the Belgian Tripel and it earns some quality points for being a high alcohol content brew that maintains a great flavor. However, I find Belgian beers to be too strongly carbonated, limiting the how much of the malts and hops you can actually savor and generally bringing down the brew.

Despite my general bias against Belgian beers, I had trouble picking my favorite offering. It was tough to choose between Chimay White and Kriek Boon, but ultimately, I’ll give it to the cherry lambic that has never done me wrong. Kriek deserves the 9.

Culture scores for the Belgians are hard to justify. There aren’t to many iconic Belgian beer images that spring to mind for most people but they deserve a solid 7 if only because of their influence on brewing in other parts of Western Europe.

4. Ireland
Original Style: 7, Individual Beer: 8, Culture: 9
Total = 24

I know Mark is going to rip my head off for this and another one of my Irish friends already screamed at me when I told him that the Irish wouldn’t be medaling, but here goes anyway:

Obviously, the original style choice is the Irish Stout, but as readers of this blog know, I’m not the world’s biggest stout fan. Not to mention, there’s a major historical question as to whether the stout really originated in Ireland. I’m already giving the benefit of the doubt on that one because I wouldn’t want to have to rate them based on the Irish Red.

The Irish individual beer entry is my favorite Irish Stout: Murphy’s. Some may be angry that I didn’t choose Guinness, but trust me, this isn’t meant as a knock on Guinness so much as a suggestion that you try a different stout for once.

The culture score is an easy 9 and would have been a perfect 10 if it weren’t for having to share soccer hooligans with the U.K. and the fact that St. Patrick’s Day didn’t become the crazy festival we know and love until the Irish migrated to the U.S.

That’s all for now but don’t forget to check back tomorrow when BeerHappens hands out the medals. Can you guess who will win gold?