The craft beer business is booming, we all know that’s true. Lately, the general public and mainstream media is catching on to craft beer too, god bless em.
Tonight at 7 p.m. , the Battle of the Breweries starts on that most mainstream of local television shows, King5 Evening Magazine. You may have seen this mentioned on air and posted on social media in the past few weeks? Here’s what you need to know about it:
Two weeks ago, King5 asked their viewers to nominate their favorite Washington breweries. The nomination process took a little over a week, with 4,500 brewery nominations submitted. The top 16 most-nominated breweries went through to the “Sweet 16” – yep, just like the NCAA basketball brackets. The selection committee, including myself, placed the top 16 breweries into brackets.
Starting tonight, King5 Evening Magazine will reveal the top 16 nominated breweries. Then, with the breweries pitted against each other one-by-one, viewers will be called upon to vote for their favorite.
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This is entirely a popularity contest. I call on you, knowledgeable Washington Beer Blog readers, to do the right thing and vote early and often for your favorite breweries. Otherwise we know the winner will likely be Mac & Jack, nothing against them of course, but you know what I mean.
Breweries, be sure to share and promote this on your social media channels. I can tell you, some of our larger breweries didn’t make the top 16 because they didn’t post the call to nominations. And some of our smaller and scrappier breweries posted this up and garnered the nominations to make the list. If you’re in but think you have a tough bracket, the only way you can emerge victorious is to make sure all your fans know to vote for you. And what the hell, it’s FREE publicity. You could pay a professional marketing firm a lot of money to tell you there is nothing better than FREE publicity.
Because I apparently fit the Evening Magazine viewer demographic to a tee, King5 asked me to be part of the selection committee. Placing the top 16 breweries in their brackets was not an easy task. It was like picking which of the kids is my favorite. And knowing we were throwing some of our favorites to the wolves.
Also sitting on the committee with me were Chuck Shin from Chuck’s on 85th, and Robyn Schumacher, certified cicerone for Marination Ma Kai and partner/assistant brewer for upcoming Stoup Brewing in Ballard. We three met over beers at Chuck’s on 85th last Monday to film the “selection process” and interviews.
You’ll see our awkward mainstream TV debuts, along with video features at the 16 top breweries, if you tune in tonight at 7:00, channel 5.
