Check out Willamette Week’s awesome President of Beers

Willamette Week, an alternative weekly in the Portland area that covers news and culture, has a great series going on right now on its website entitled the President of Beers. WW managed to acquire “flagship” beers from each state, meaning the signature beer from a given state’s biggest brewery, not necessarily the best, as it points out. And as writer Martin Cizmar says, probably broke some laws in the process. After laboring to get all those beers from all those states, the weekly rounded up 12 tasters to blindly try all the beers and rank them on a scale of 1-100.

The countdown began on Aug. 24 and the first 5 (meaning the worst 5) are as follows:

50. Pennsylvania: Yuengling Lager
49. Maine: Shipyard Export Ale
48. Louisiana: Abita Purple Haze
47. Texas: Shiner Bock
46. West Virginia: Bridge Brew Works Belgian-Style Tripel

The countdown goes until Oct. 3, when the top 10 and the winner will be revealed. I encourage you to go and check it out, it’s definitely a cool way to rank beers.

As for Montana, I can only guess that Moose Drool gets picked. It’s the signature beer from Big Sky Brewing Co., after all.

Update:: Montana comes in at No. 16 with Big Sky Brewing’s Moose Drool.

- Matt Pritchard