There is a poll being conducted right now by the Examiner.com asking people to vote for America’s best beer city. According to Charlie Papazian, the Beer Examiner, “BeerCity USA 2010 is a chance for local beer communities to express their enthusiasm and support for their local breweries and local better beer bars, restaurants, stores and distributors.  Let’s have some fun.”

Click here to vote for your favorite beer city. We suggest that you choose Seattle, but it’s up to you.

I just voted, so I’ve seen the current standings. Portland is making a nice showing, as is Sand Diego. Both are notable beer towns, to be sure. Asheville, North Carolina is in the lead. By a long shot. While I am sure that Asheville is a lovely place, and I’m equally certain the the residents of Asheville are proud of their town, let’s get real. With nearly 9,000 votes cast thus far, Asheville has received more than 40 percent.

Last night at the Firkin-Firkin throwdown someone asked why we stopped posting polls on the Washington Beer Blog. I didn’t really have an answer, but I explained that one thing we learned was that the results really don’t mean anything. For instance, when we ran our poll asking you to vote for Seattle’s best brew pub, the nice people over at MyBallard.com, a prolific and popular neighborhood blog, got wind of it and unleashed the hounds. Maritime Pacific’s Jolly Roger Taproom won by virtue of a crushing landslide of votes from people who may or may not even like beer but definitely love Ballard. That’s not a knock on the Jolly Roger or Ballard, it’s just the way it played out.

So, here I am asking you to g0 vote in a poll. Why? I don’t know. I guess I’m just proud of Seattle.

A good friend of the Washington Beer Blog is currently in Belgium, which gave us an idea for a new poll. Our friend is doing a very good job of keeping us posted as he ambles about the bucolic Belgian beer landscape. Bastard.  Not really, it’s just that he is making us very jealous, to say the least.

So we have decided that it is time to start a new poll. We want to know where in the world you would choose to drink beer. Imagine that money is not an issue. You get to go wherever you want. Belgium, England, Ireland, Germany, and so on. The poll is over there in the right sidebar.

We’ve included California and Oregon as options because your responses to previous posts and polls suggest that many of you think that those two states are worthy of making the short list. We are also allowing you to write in anyplace you like.

So where in the world would you go to drink beer?

Poll results - which state produces the best beer.

We have just closed our most recent poll. We asked you, essentially, “Which state produces the best beer?” The choices were Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, or other. This poll was created in response to last month’s hot topic: drinking local beer vs. drinking the best beer available.

Since this is the Washington Beer Blog, it comes as no surprise that Washington won, collecting 38% of the votes.  Oregon (28.4%) and California (25.8%) were not far behind. It is surprising that Colorado did so poorly.

We admit that this was not one of our more popular polls. It ran for just about one month and only attracted 478 votes.  Considering the number of daily visitors to the Blog, we expected a lot more votes. Last month we posted an article about drinking local beer vs. drinking the best available beer – To drink or not to drink… local, that is. It was one of our most popular posts to date and created a lot of good, heated conversation. So why did people not want to vote in this poll? Who knows.

We just concluded our poll asking how much Washington beer you drink. Now we have a new poll question for you. Which state has the best breweries?

There’s been a lot of chatter online lately about local beer versus out-of-state beer. We’d like to know what you think. Do our Washington breweries stand up to the competition? This isn’t about your favorite brewery or your favorite beer. It’s about each state as a collective brewing entity. However, if you think a single beer from a single brewery is so incredibly good that it deserves to carry the entire state, I suppose you could vote for a state based on that one beer.

Go ahead and vote. Don’t cost nothin’.

So how much Washington beer do you drink? We just closed our poll asking you that question. Turns out, you drink quite a bit of it. Two-thirds of you drink Washington beer more than half the time.

• 90% of you drink Washington beer more than 25% of the time.
• 67% of you drink Washington beer more than 50% of the time.
• 12% of you drink Washington beer more than 90% of the time.

Look at those results. You know what they mean? Ya, neither do we. This was not one of our more popular polls. We only had a couple hundred people vote despite the fact that we had thousands of visitors during the time the poll ran. This is particularly interesting given the fact that last week’s post, To drink or not to drink, local that is, received so much attention. That post apparently made a lot of people think about the topic of drinking local beer. Chris Devlin even posted his own followup story on the Seattle Beer News.

Here’s what we learned:

10% of you drink WA beer 25% of the time or less.
23% of you drink WA beer 25%-50%  of the time.
30% of you drink WA beer 50%-75% of the time.
25% of you drink WA beer 75%-90% of the time.
12% of you drink WA beer more than 90% of the time.

Yesterday we posted an article about the “drink local” concept. It was a popular post and generated some good, thoughtful comments. Now we have introduced an even easier, faster way for you to comment on the Drink Local issue.

You should have seen this coming. Today, we started a new poll. It is over there in the right sidebar. We’re curious… “Of all the beer you drink, what percentage is brewed in Washington?” We know you probably don’t keep track, so just take a guess. Estimate.

We suspect that the people who drink a lot of Washington beer will be more likely to vote, but what do we know?

Since December 6th we’ve been running a poll asking, “What is your favorite Seattle-area beer festival?” The results are in. It’s a virtual tie between three events – the largest, the newest, and the geekiest.

Perhaps we should just call this one a draw. With nearly 600 people voting (we expected more), the Washington Cask Beer Festival narrowly escaped with a victory, getting 29% of the votes.  The runner-ups were the Washington Brewers Festival (27%) and the Tacoma Craft Beer Festival (26%). It was a tie for 4th place, as well, though they were left in the dust. You can see the results over there in the right sidebar.

The big surprise here is that the Tacoma Craft Beer Festival garnered so many votes. Granted, it was a great festival, and we’re already looking forward to next year’s event, but it’s new. Maybe that’s what encourage people to vote for it. Maybe the fact that some people down in Tacoma were very active in recruiting voters had something to do with it as well . Whatever the case, this is an impressive showing.

The big daddy – the Washington Brewers Festival – came in second place, which really isn’t surprising given the sheer number of people who attend the annual event at St. Edward State Park. Referred to by many as the Father’s Day Beer Festival, this 2.5-day event attracts approximately 15,000 people each year. A lot of great beer, served in a beautiful environment, on a usually-sunny weekend… no surprise that it got so many votes.

The Cask Fest – It never ceases to amaze me that people like cask beer so much. I don’t know why it surprises me. I too lust for cask-conditioned beer. Still, I never would have expected so many people to enjoy drinking flat beer served at room temperature. Yes, of course I know there is more to it than that, so don’t attack me for saying it. I’m just saying that is surprises me. Beer Advocate magazine recently asked their national readership a questions: “Do you think cask ale in the US has become a gimmick?” Say what? Shut the front door! Well, okay I suppose it’s a discussion worth having, but apparently people out here in Washington really like cask beer, gimmicky or not.

Thanks to everyone who voted and congratulations to the winners. Let’s call this one a tie.

We have just posted a new poll asking you to vote for your favorite Seattle-area beer festival. There are other festivals, we know, but we think it’s pretty obvious where we drew the line in terms of the kinds of festivals we included.

Once this poll closes, we’d like to find out what you think about festivals outside of the Seattle-area. We know about some of the other festivals around Washington (Stevenson Blues and Brews, Yakima Fresh Hop Festival, Strange Brew, etc), but we’d love to hear about your favorite “out-of-town” Washington brew fests. Please leave comments and tell us about any festivals you’d like to see included in our next poll.

We gave you a lot of choices. Maybe that turned some people off. Whatever the case, this poll didn’t get nearly as much attention as previous polls. In the end, 508 people voted. We rolled the “Other” votes into the results where appropriate and ignored votes for non-Washington beers.  The results do not include any beer that ended up with only one vote.

The stand outs: Boundary Bay Cabin Fever (22%), Maritime Pacific Jolly Roger (15%), and Big Time Old Wooly (13%). Those are the only beers that ended up with more than 10%. Beyond those three, the field was pretty evenly split. Complete results below.

With the Winter Beer Festival just a month away, we figured this poll would be a good way to get you thinking about your favorite Washington winter beers. The low voter turnout might indicate that you aren’t ready to think about the long, dark winter which will soon be upon us. Today, temperatures are supposed to be in the 60s – which is unreal for November. Old Man Winter is going to make us pay for it, I promise.

We look forward to seeing everyone at the Winter Beer Festival, where there will surely be some surprises to delight all of our palates.

We’ve had the poll up for 10 days now. Voting has been slower than we expected, but we’ve had a few hundred votes now and some clear leaders have emerged. Boundary Bay Cabin Fever is currently in the lead, followed closely by Maritime Pacific Jolly Roger, Big Time Old Wooly, and Elysian BiFrost.

We will run the poll for a few more days, announce the final results, and then move on. If you have not yet, you should vote for your favorite Winter beer.

Someone questioned why we consider Old Wooly a winter beer when it is a barley wine. Big time releases Old Wooly every year on December 1st and many beer lovers around here associate it with winter, so we decided to include it.

Boundary Bay Cabin Fever – 18%
Maritime Pacific Jolly Roger – 16%
Big Time Old Wooly – 14%
Elysian BiFrost – 10%
Fish Brewing Winterfish 6%
The remaining contestants all have less than 5%

“Other” votes – They’ve been included in the results above. Well, except for the ones that are not Washington beers and the ones that are not winter beers.