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Since we love lists here at the faculty lounge -- lists of laterals, lists of dean searches, lists of what we all make (or at least what those of us in the public sector make), list of coffee houses, lists of best restaurants in America -- maybe it's time to start talking about ranking beers?  Close readers of the faculty lounge will recall that I'm no fan of coffee mixed with beer.  Make a choice; it's either time for a stimulant or time for a sedative.  Not both.  Plus, I just don't like the taste of beer poured into a coffee cup that's not been washed out.  Perhaps my more sophisticated colleagues will school me in what a rhubarb I am with that statement.

No surprise, there're some ranking of beers out there already.  There are on-line rating groups, like beeradvocate.com, ratebeer.com (rankings here), beerchurch.com, qualityales.com and of course blogs, like beercrusade and beerviking, and the general food sites, like chef2chef, and a new one on me, rankopedia.  Man, faculty lounge has to team up with rankopedia -- oh, the rankings we could have.

I imagine that Kim Krawiec would like the market to decide this one, so we could look for evidence of what beer's sold the most (or maybe what beer's sold the most in the upscale grocery stores or something).

Probably time to get the spreadsheet out and start running some correlations on price and rank.  Hey, this could lead to a whole genre, running parallel to the US News law school rankings literature out there.

So which beer?  Well, chef2chef lists the top 10 as: 

Yuengling (Pennsylvania) 

Guinness

Westvleteren

Duvel

Ommegang Abbey Ale

Kostritzer Schwarzbier 

Fantome

Rochefort 10

Heineken, and

Carlsberg. 

I've only heard of four  of those (and only had three of them).  But it's probably going to be some Boston beer.  Sam Adams is cliche, but that would be my guess. (Though they might try something basic and classic like Bud.)  However, it might be Yuengling, which has been really remade its image.  I recall when it was a bottom shelfer -- right alongside Schmidt's and Ballentine (alas, long since defunct).  But they're sort of yuppified now.  At least it's respectable to drink around my high-fallutin' colleagues, more or less.

Just remember, as the beer is the drink of reconciliation, archeologists also believe it's what caused civilization in the first place.  (See, you never know when something you read in college will come in hany while blogging ... twenty two years later!)

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