What is a Fantasy Beer League, and Why Do You Need One?

A few years ago, my Charlotte Beer Collective co-founder Jeremy sent me a text. It read “setting up a fantasy beer league, you want in?”. My reply - “Yes. What is that?” Little did we know that exchange would send us down a path of great friends, great fun, and lots and lots of great beer.

Fantasy Beer League - What is it?

Just like fantasy football (or any other sport), fantasy beer league is a competition among beer ‘teams’ that each play breweries drafted at the beginning of the season. Unlike any other fantasy sport league, the rules are extremely flexible, the season can be as long or short as you like, and the meets can be as frequent or infrequent as schedules allow.

Drafting

Depending on the rules you decide to apply, there can be a lot of strategy that goes into the breweries you draft. As the commissioner of the league, you will need to decide on a number of things prior to draft. Our first year, we were limited to 4 breweries that we had to play twice during the season. We were given a list of styles we were going to compete with during the season a few days before the draft. We were also told that each brewery we selected had to have a physical location in NC or SC (we added VA during year 2). This somewhat limits the inclusion of ‘unattainable’ beer into the competition.

Playing

At the core, Fantasy Beer League is a blind ranking of a single beer style. For this example, we will use the always-popular Hazy IPA. Each player brings a hazy IPA from a brewery on their ‘team’ with the label covered so that no one knows what beer is being poured (foil works really well for this purpose). To provide a true double-blind tasting, it is best to have a 3rd party (usually a spouse or friend of the host) assign each beer a number and pour the beer away from the players.

Once served, all players rank the beers and provide their notes to the host or 3rd party for counting. Ideally, none of the players are aware of which beer is theirs, and everyone will truly vote blind.

Once the votes are counted, we always liked to start from last place to revel the winners. Sometimes you are in for a real surprise to find that your Pliney didn’t stack up too well against a lesser-know local, but that’s half the fun.

Playoffs

Playoffs can work in any way that sounds best to you. For scoring, we found that using a running total of points was a great way to reward consistent players. For the actual competition, we have tried a system of two rounds with a bye for the top players, we have let the top player select the style for the playoffs, we have pre-announced the style, and probably a few more I have forgotten. I tend to like any system that gets everyone into the playoffs with some advantage for the best from the regular season.

If you are thinking about starting a Fantasy Beer League, I have outline some ideas below on rules that you might want to consider. I have provided a ‘casual/fun’ option along with a ‘pro’ option for each rule so that you can tailor the league to your suiting.

Styles:

Casual - stick with major categories like IPA, porter, stout, pilsner, etc.

Pro - try to identify specific styles to keep the competition focused. Something like no adjunct, no barrel aged imperial stout, west coast IPA, etc.

Drafting Breweries:

Casual - limit breweries to what can be found on the shelf of a few local bottle shops. This means that everyone can find the winner of each style the week after the event. We added a ‘wildcard’ in our second year that would allow each player to play a beer not from one of their breweries a single time during the season.

Pro - no limit, if your brother-in-law’s cousin’s friend makes an amazing dry-hopped saison in his basement, draft him and play it.

Teams/Conferences:

Casual - teams make it easier to get the beer fresh the week of the competition and lead to larger groups for the competition.

Pro - every beer drinker for themselves. You better know beer, breweries, distribution schedule, and how to find what you need.

Hosting a Competition:

We typically allowed someone to volunteer to host. If you have the right size group, rotation might work well. Our hosts usually had some food options as we usually met on a week night around dinner time. We always stated the evening with some share beers and food before we got to the actual competition.

Scoring:

Casual - when playing with 8+ teams, it can be hard to rank beers 4-7. The first season we just ranked the top 3 of the beers in play. To add some spice the second year, we also ranked the worst beer for a negative score.

Pro - all beers ranked by every player. All players should have a strong history of drinking a wide variety of styles so that rankings will be true to the style. You could work out a way to prevent a person/team from voting for their own beer.

Playoffs:

Casual - pick a popular style (or two) and let everyone in.

Pro - pick a very specific style. Wood-aged sours, rum barrel aged stouts, open fermentation ales.

Prize:

A wrestling-style championship belt might be the best prize there is for a beer league.

Keep in mind that unlike other fantasy games, each player will be paying out of pocket for beer at each competition. For more casual leagues, bragging rights might be enough of a prize. For more intense leagues, a cash prize can be great. I have often thought it would be fun to have everyone contribute a rare/valuable beer on draft night to be awarded at the end of the season.

For most people, a casual fantasy beer league can be a great way to find new beer friends, explore styles you might have overlooked, or discover new beers/breweries in styles you already love.

If you are interested in setting up a fantasy beer league and want some guidance, feel free to shoot us here at CBC a note, and we would be glad to lend a hand.