TNIAAM 2020 Beer Bracket: Final Four voting

When this week started, we had a full bracket of breweries to vote on, and plenty of uncertainty around how things would go in TNIAAM’s 2020 Beer Bracket. Since then, there’s been both a lot of chaos and a lot of chalk, and a lot of Mortalis stans pushing their favorite brewery through each round despite being a 14-seed.

Now, we’re in the Final Four, and Mortalis is still around, and also seems like they can’t be stopped following a dominant win over Hill Farmstead. If you’re voting for them, definitely keep doing so. But if you’re not excited about their fan-fueled dominance... you could also vote against them if you so choose.

Elsewhere in Thursday’s Elite Eight, it was all chalk: Top remaining seeds Side Project, The Veil and Modern Times won the Midwest, South and West, respectively, and now we see if any of them can survive the buzzsaw.

Below are all four remaining matchups. Descriptions are minimal since we already had some extensive ones yesterday. As always, voting closes at 11 p.m. ET. So the “title game” will be on Saturday, for those of you that have nothing better to do than hang around here during your weekends (a growing number of late).

Mortalis (Avon, NY) vs. Side Project (St. Louis)

In one corner, New York’s newfound powerhouse, Mortalis. in the other, one of the top breweries in the country, Side Project. There’s a likely outcome here, but props to both breweries (and their supporters) for really sprinting through their regions en route to this semifinal. Both won big repeatedly, with Mortalis overcoming a seeding disadvantage to get there. We’ll see who trends continue for (if anyone).

The Veil (Richmond, VA) vs. Modern Times (San Diego)

After impressive showings to start the tournament, I honestly thought The Veil was going to lose to Cigar City in the Elite Eight. Not because they deserved to. But because Cigar City had pulled some upsets by way of name recognition to get there and is distributed far wider than The Veil. Instead, The Veil won big, and now comes up against Modern Times — one of my five favorite breweries, admittedly, but also not a team I expected to get out of the West due to stiff competition at the top. You know who I’m rooting for, but it would see there are at least a couple The Veil supporters likely to be chiming in through the end of voting. We’ll see, I guess.