Drinking your way through the 2018 NCAA Tournament: Presenting the bracket

Much to America’s chagrin, the Syracuse Orange made this year’s NCAA Tournament. And not only that, they even won a game already! That’s cause for a beer, or several.

As we’ve done for the past three seasons (2015, 2016 and 2017), we went ahead and picked the best beer in each and every city represented by the tournament’s 68 teams — a list already narrowed to 64 here, following the First Four (damn L.A. and Brooklyn already getting knocked out of this thing...).

Most college towns have at least one brewery to call their own at this point, so the task has gotten simpler each year. But there are still some holdouts. Those cities were faced getting whichever brewery we deemed closest to campus. They’ll all be on board soon enough.

But to the beer itself:

Below, we provide selections for every NCAA Tournament team’s best brewery (again, in the actual city they play in), keep them in the corresponding seeds. But unlike past years, where Aaron and I picked the winners, we’re now putting that task into your hands. From now through the Final Four, we’ll be advancing the breweries that get the most votes and updating the field accordingly. That voting will occur in upcoming posts.

Apologies in advance. It’s likely that your favorite brewery was either left out due to the real-life bracket or perhaps there was just a better brewery and/or beer in the same city. Regardless, find yourself a way to drink as many of these as possible (if you haven’t already).

The bracket is below. We’ll have separate posts for each region’s first round matchups coming up: South, East, Midwest and West regions. This display only lists the brewery name, for purposes of space. Click to make it bigger.