Fantasy Draught '08

Last year Jonathan over at beermapping.com had a brilliant idea... Given the success of fantasy sports, why not do a fantasy beer fest draft? And he did just that, hosting the first Fantasy Draught prior to the 2007 Great American Beer Festival. The set-up is pretty simple: you draft breweries just as you would players in fantasy sports, and you get points for each medal your breweries win. Unfortunately, by the time I learned about it last year registration was closed. This year, however, I found out about it in time and--to make things even better--ended up with the first draft pick.

Anybody who's ever played softball with me or bowled with me knows I'm pretty competitive. As such, I had to take MillerCoors with the first pick even though I'm not exactly a fan of their products (hey, last year Miller and Coors combined for two gold medals, three silver and three bronze). There are twenty-seven participants in the draft, and because the order snakes (i.e. reverses each round) my next picks were #54 and 55. I took the two breweries that, by coincidence, make my two favorite American-brewed Scotch ales: Dark Horse Brewing Co. (brewers of Scotty Karate) and Oskar Blues (who make Old Chub). My next two picks are coming up later tonight and I'm still trying to figure out what I want to go with. We have eight picks total, so I have a couple longshots up my sleeve, but at the same time other picks that I thought would last to the late rounds (such as Odell, brewer of the vastly underrated 90 Shilling) ended up going much earlier than expected.

You can check out the latest Draught picks here (FYI my screen name is "Windigstadt," which just happens to mean "Windy City" in German). In the meantime I just thought I would post this to get you thinking about what breweries you think are the cream of the crop. Cheers!