Voting, I mean. I’ve finalized today’s July 4th Beer Tasting, and whipped up this handy ballot (download pdf) for participants.

As you can see above, I’m going to be pouring 8 flights of 2 beers each. In each flight, I’ll pour an example of a red state beer and a blue state beer and ask participants to vote for their favorite. Trick is, I won’t say which is which. Each flight will be a different style of beer, starting with a Pilsener and ending on a Red Ale. In selecting beers, my main purpose was representing as many states as possible, not neccessarily beers I thought would be good competitors, or even good beers, but there are some real gems in my fridge.

15 different states are represented for eight beer styles (due to limited red state beer availability, I doubled up on Alaska):

1. Pilsener: Montana (Red) vs. Washington (Blue)
2. Lager: Louisiana (Red) vs. New York (Blue)
3. White Beer: Colorado (Red) vs. Massachusetts (Blue)
4. Saison: Florida (Red) vs. California (Blue)
5. Pale Ale: Idaho (Red) vs. Hawaii (Blue)
6. ESB: Wyoming (Red) vs. Wisconsin (Blue)
7. IPA: Alaska (Red) vs. Pennsylvania (Blue)
8. Red: Alaska (Red) vs. Oregon (Blue)

I’ll post the actual beers later, as well as the results. My friends are mostly blue-staters politically, but do their beer tastes run more to red? Time will tell … Happy Fourth!