On a cold January Saturday, we packed in to Little Havana, 48 cases of 24 different beers in the cooler.   A five-round bracket, and only one would win.

When it came down to it, Heavy Seas Peg Leg Imperial Stout was crowned the winner.  Peg Leg entered Beer Bowl 8 as a '3' seed, meaning it had to go through all 5 rounds.  In the wild-card round, it defeated Newcastle Brown 50-43.  It's first round match was against Flying Fish Belgian Dubbel (a #2 seed), which it defeated 41-36.  In the second round, it met and defeated Blue Point Hoptical Illusion (which had previously knocked off #1 seed Stone IPA) 36-24, which landed it in to the final four with Troegs Pale Ale, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and 21st Amendment Back in Black IPA.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale defeated 21st Amendment BiB fairly easily 33-21, while Peg Leg narrowly avoided a tie-breaker with Troegs Pale Ale by winning 28-27.

In the final, Peg Leg defeated SN Pale by three votes - 24-21.  A stout had never won, let alone finished in the final four of a Beer Bowl.

Surprised?  I was.  Historically, Beer Bowl has always found, what I describe as the "least offending, crowd pleaser" beer.  Sam Adams Winter Lager, Saranac Black Forest (twice), and Pete's Wicked Ale - none of those jump out as anything extreme.  Other historical "final-four" finishers have been Blue Moon Winter, Brooklyn Pennant, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.  Am I saying Peg Leg is extreme?  Well - it's an Imperial Stout.  Stouts and IPAs are on opposite spectrums of the beer scale.  Could anyone have seen Peg Leg overcoming the hops in the field (Lagunitas Maximus IPA, Blue Point Hoptical, Stone IPA, Harpoon IPA, 21st Amendment BiB, Redhook Longhammer IPA, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Kona Fire Rock Pale Ale, Stone Pale Ale, Troegs Pale Ale, Stoudts American Pale Ale, and Heavy Seas Pale Ale)?  Not I.

I'm quite proud of the results from the season and Beer Bowl 8.  As I mentioned, never before have we had as much hops, and the other three within the final four fell in to that category (hop heads - I know I'm calling a pale ale "hoppy" and for general purposes they're hoppier than what traditionally has done well at Beer Bowl.  If you want to further debate it - we can do so over a Stone Ruination.)

On the philantrical side of things, we ended up collecting nearly $500 and a lot of great donations for the Baltimore Station! 

What's next?  It's the off-season.  We're bound to see some potential changes to the website for next season, and I'm toying with the idea of altering the season - starting in September.  Perhaps even a Beer Bowl 8 1/2 this summer (no season leading up to it)!  Stay tuned!

By the way - fun stats - check out the voting results by judge (judge first name & judge ID# shown).