PORTLAND, Ore. — After a quiet third round during Thanksgiving week in which fewer than 500 votes were cast, the Oregon Beer Showdown roared back to life in Round 4 with more than 1,500 votes cast by eager fans of Oregon breweries.
Unfortunately, a few of them were a little two eager, casting more than one vote per IP address, which is against the voting rules. Nearly 400 votes were cast from one device amid a swarm of repeat ballots. When these were purged a respectable 1,003 valid ballots remained and corrected the outcome of three of the four contests.
So visitors to Portland Business Journal and KGW, which are jointly presenting this year's Showdown may be surprised to learn that the "Foamy 4" that survived Round 4 were:
- (3) Ecliptic Brewing of Portland vs. (3) Breakside Brewery of Milwaukie and Portland
- (3) pFriem Family Brewers of Hood River vs. (3) Boneyard Beer Co. of Bend
Among those four esteemed Oregon breweries, pFriem collected the most votes, 633, followed by Boneyard with 591, Breakside with 518 and Ecliptic with 481. However, the new matchups could radically alter the point leaders. Don't forget that Ecliptic has won the Showdown the last two years in a row and three times overall.
Here's the updated bracket for those who wish to drink it all in.
Three is the lucky number this year. All four breweries were No. 3 seeds entering the Showdown among 60 other breweries. Seeding was primarily based on beer production in 2020 and these four brewed between 20,000 and 25,000 31-gallon barrels of beer per the Business Journal's annual list. This is the first time in the Showdown's seven years that all of the Foamy 4 had the same seed.
It's also the first year that Boneyard, which was acquired by Oregon's largest craft brewer earlier this year, has made it to the semifinals round. It's the lone newcomer as Ecliptic, pFriem and Breakside all made it to the Foamy 4 last year as well as other years, but Ecliptic is the only one to win out in the finals.