People's Choice Winner: Deschutes Hop in the Dark

Beer releases seem to be cyclical. Either that or it was the economy. For whatever reason, this year we had far fewer new releases than in a typical year. A good half of the beers on my list of potential Satori winners (best debut Oregon beer) came from new breweries. If it hadn't been for the hype around Cascadian Dark Ales, I'm not sure what, beyond new breweries, we'd talk about this year.

It is appropriate then that your choice for the best debut beer is a CDA--and appropriate that you chose a different beer than I did. (More on that tomorrow, when I unveil the Satori.) Here's how the final voting turned out, and as you can see, Deschutes took home the honors:

It is worth noting how close the vote was and how the top four beers were all different styles (CDA, summer IPA, sour, and old ale). It's also worth noting that the nanobrewer Beetje ended up with a sizable share of the vote despite selling almost no beer (at least when compared with the top two breweries). Whether that was evidence of vote-packing or an avid niche fanbase, it was nevertheless impressive.

Congrats to the folks from Bend--