Q:  How did you choose the 16 beers that are present in each division?

A:  First off, they had to be beers that were in BeerTripper's Beer Index.  Any beer that was not in the index, was immediately excluded.  Then it sort of depended on the Division in question, luck and no doubt some personal bias.  For Instance, with the Light Lager Division there were basically just enough Light Lagers in the Beer Index to fill out the Division, so few if any cuts had to be made.  With the American Macro Lager Division there was more than enough to fill the 16 slots so I tended to exclude imports (since there was an Import Division, but obviously I didn't exclude all Imports from the American Macro Lager Division) and tried not to include too many Macro's from the same Brewer.  For the Import and Craft Divisions there were so many choices to fill only 16 slots that I tried to do it essentially randomly, but I did want to include as many brewers as possible so I tried to limit those divisions to one entry per Brewery.  No doubt personal bias sometimes played a factor, which is why Samuel Adams Noble Pils was represented instead of Samuel Adams Boston Lager, I just happen to like Noble Pils better, right or wrong that was how it went down.  (It should be noted that I have a plan to choose the beers differently next year, assuming I do this again next year.)

Q:  How did you decide the seeding of the beers in each division?

A:  Google.  I didn't want personal bias to effect that so I used Google.  I googled each beer name and wrote down the number of hits it received, then seeded them by making the beer with the most hits the number 1 seed, second most hits the number 2 seed, e.t.c..  I must say there were some big surprises there as I can't believe that Budweiser was not the number one seed in the American Macro Division, and really it wasn't even close.  Also I found it shocking that the number 1 best selling beer in America, Bud Light, was second to Miller Chill.  What's up with that?  Probably the most shocking to me was Shiner Bohemian Black Lager being seeded number one in the Craft Beer Division.  I definitely did not see that coming, and actually I still don't understand it.  Sure, I bet if I would have used Samuel Adams Boston Lager it would have gotten more google hits than Shiner Bohemian Black Lager as Boston Lager is Samuel Adams flagship product, but Bohemian Black Lager is not Shiner's flagship product either, so,... go figure.  And just for the record, I did not use quotes (which I should have I suppose) and if results came back that were clearly not related to the beer I googled, like with Zatec and Lone Star, I re-googled adding the word beer, so Zatec was seeded with it's Zatec Beer google score not the score from Zatec alone.

Q:  What is the schedule for voting in each round?

A:  Round 1 - March 1st -  March 7th

Round 2 -  March 7th to March 21st

Round 3 - March 21st to March 25th

Round 4 - March 25th to  March 29th

Round 5 - March 29th to April 1st

Round 6 - April 1st to April 4th

Q:  How come when I finish voting within a Division I see my votes but not how everyone else has voted so far?

A:  That's an excellent question.  I fully realize that it would be more engaging to visitors if they got to see the results real-time.  However, I was also afraid that perhaps someone who is a really big fan/employee of a certain beer/beer company would use the current results to cast more ballots if they saw their beer behind in the ratings.  Plus, if I showed results real-time it would be easier for those same people to figure out how I am culling fake ballots from the results.  So, ultimately I decided to hide results, at least real time results, so you won't be seeing the results until at the very least a 24 hour delay.  (Although, I'm still wishy-washy about this decision, so I could also change my mind at any time.)

Q:  I only care about the XXX vs YYY match-up, can I just vote for that?

A:  No.  You have to vote for each match-up within a Division for any of your votes in that Division to count.  Note, once it hits the Elite Eight, Final Four and Final Two the divisions are merged into one, but you still must vote for each match up in that one Division for any of your votes in that round to count.  (I honestly don't remember my reasoning on that decision, but that is definitely the way I set it up.)