The best Iowa beers are down to the Final Four in Beer Brackets. Vote now for a winner.

Susan Stapleton, Des Moines Register
·2 min read
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A volunteer pours a beer inside the Iowa Craft Beer Tent at Hoops and Hops at Cowles Commons in Des Moines.
A volunteer pours a beer inside the Iowa Craft Beer Tent at Hoops and Hops at Cowles Commons in Des Moines.

Three No. 1 seeds and a 13 seed vie for top honors in the Des Moines Register's Beer Brackets. It's now down to the Final Four Iowa craft beers.

This round of Beer Brackets voting ended on March 22, and now four Iowa beers remain to vie for bragging rights. This marks the fifth installment of letting readers vote to discover Iowa’s favorite craft beer brewed in the state.

We invite readers to vote for their favorites, sorted into four brackets with one brewery and their beers remaining in each. One bracket focuses on lagers and ales with Exile's Ruthie winning that. Another features IPAs, with Big Grove Easy Eddy Hazy IPA winning. A third features stouts and porters, including winner Confluence Brewing Co. Milk Man Milk Stout. The fourth is a wild card category with Peace Tree Brewing Blonde Fatale Belgian-style blonde ale representing.

So far, 1,937 people cast 37,413 votes to trim the contestants down to four.

The closest race featured Confluence Brewing Co. Milk Man Milk Stout defeating SingleSpeed Brewing Tip the Cow Cocoa Espresso Milk Stout by nine votes. Exile Brewing Co. Ruthie defeated SingleSpeed Brewing Co. Gable Munich Helles by 13 votes.

The Beer Brackets Logo for 2023
The Beer Brackets Logo for 2023

Which Iowa craft breweries remain in Beer Brackets?

Ales, pilsners and similar bracket

1. Exile Brewing Co. Ruthie

IPAs bracket

1. Big Grove Easy Eddy Hazy IPA

Porters and stouts bracket

13. Confluence Brewing Co. Milk Man Milk Stout

Wild card bracket

1. Peace Tree Brewing Blonde Fatale Belgian-style blonde ale

This year, around 30 breweries elected to participate in Beer Brackets, each recommending a beer or four to compete. The Iowa Brewers Guild helped us find the beers to highlight in the contest. The seeds were randomly selected based on which beer the breweries suggested in each category.

More:Your guide to 20 Des Moines metro breweries, taprooms and their craft beer

Similar to the NCAA hoops brackets, your favorites will battle it out with round-by-round voting through March 31, with a winner announced on April 3. We’ll keep you posted every step of the way until a winner is declared.

This round of voting remains open until March 27 and the finals run March 29-31.

In 2019, the last time the Des Moines Register held Beer Brackets, the winner was SingleSpeed Brewing, which originally opened in 2012 in Cedar Falls. Fenders Brewing in Polk City won in 2018. Confluence Brewing Co. in Des Moines won in 2017. And in the first competition in 2016, West O Beer from Milford won.



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Susan Stapleton is the entertainment editor at The Des Moines Register. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or drop her a line at sstapleton@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: The best 4 Iowa beers remain in the Beer Brackets. Vote for the winner