The Beer Dance: Round 2 Of Our Craft Beer March Madness Bracket

East bracket

Boston: Samuel Adams' Boston Lager
You don't get to be this big a craft brewer by playing small ball.

Despite a fired-up base of hop heads in Columbus, the mighty Sam Adams machine rolled over Columbus IPA by racking up nearly five times as many votes. It helps that Boston Lager has a pretty broad footprint and is produced in multiple breweries (including one right in Columbus' backyard in Cincinnati), but it also helps to have an established product the fans love.

The craft fanboys likely don't like this win at all and don't think much of Sam's 2.5 million barrels, multiple brewing facilities and George Thorogood-laden videos. Guess what? Nobody cares. The Brewers Association actually bumped up its barrel limit for craft beers to 6 million just to accommodate Sam, and Sam returns the favor by continuing to make small batch and barrel products that appease even the most pedantic craft nerds.

Oh, and here's a fun fact for you: When the first batch of Sam Adams was brewed in 1987, nobody playing in this year's NCAA tournament was alive. They've been at this a while.

Pittsburgh: Penn Brewery's Penn Gold
Penn Gold was actually losing its matchup with Yazoo Brewing's Dos Perros early in the week, and not by a little. But as Sidney Crosby proved in his return to the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins for a 5-2 drubbing of the conference-leading New York Rangers, you don't count out Pittsburgh until the season's over.

That Munich-style session beer stormed back to win by all of 10 votes. And Yazoo was actually trying! There were Yazoo twitter updates, a get-out-the-vote campaign and nearly 100 votes worth of support. Yet anyone who's enjoyed session beer before can tell you that the joy of it isn't in a potent, high-octane start, but a pleasant, hangover-free finish. Dos Perros was a session beer that came on like an imperial in the beginning, but faded to near beer at the end.

Now Penn Gold faces a big test in Boston Lager. Even worse, it faces a flagship beer that's also technically a cross-state rival brewed at a facility just outside of Allentown, Pa. Let's see whose state this really is.

Which second-round beer in our East bracket would you prefer?
	Samuel Adams Boston Lager Penn Brewery's Penn Gold

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