Back to beer - Group Stage results, and a focus on the losers

Dear followers

Thank you for your patience whilst we indulged in real tennis, lawn tennis and Pimms. But now we know we must focus on the important things - the football World Cup and the Boxbeck Beer World Cup!

A few thoughts about the losers. I won't blog about the winners because their time will come in the knock out stages of the tournament.

One of the disadvantages of our Beer Tournaments is that we are left with a phenomenal quantity of losing beers. Generally they don't taste so bad on their own (particularly on a hot day or after enduring 3 days worth of Tuborg at Reading Festival).

The exotic beers (ie those really hard to source beers) were a mixed bag, and so are a high risk purchase. We found the Nigerian Star, the Serbian beer, the Swiss beer and, sadly, the incredibly hard to source North Korean beer all fairly nasty.

The fact that we have to follow the football groups rather than introducing beer seedings meant that we lost some really good beers (Ghana, Slovenia and New Zealand) whilst some pretty dull beers went through (in particular Argentina's Quilmes and Portugal's Super Bock). This is sad but an inevitable consequence of our rules.

So I recommend to you Ghana (Star in a bottle), Slovenia (Lasko Brewery's Zlatorog, allegedly soon to be available in the UK - check it out) and New Zealand's Speights). But fair well, and better luck in the next beer tournament.

The full results from the Group Stage:

Group A winner: France (Kronenbourg)
Group A runner up: Mexico (Bohemia)
Group A loser 1: South Africa (Castle)
Group A loser 2: Uruguay (sub Patagonia from Argentina)

Group B winner: Argentina (Quilmes) (!!!!!)
Group B runner up: Greece (Vergina)
Group B loser 1: Korea Republic (Hite)
Group B loser 2: Nigeria (Star in a tin, brewed in Nigeria)

Group C winner: USA (Dixie)
Group C runner up: England (Hop) (and no, this result was not fixed!)
Group C loser 1: Slovenia (Zlatorog)
Group C loser 2: Algeria (sub Casblanca from Morocco)

Group D winner: Germany (Bitburger)
Group D runner up: Australia (VB)
Group D loser 1: Ghana (Star in a bottle, brewed in Ghana)
Group D loser 2: Serbia (Apatinsko)

Group E winner: Denmark (Elephant)
Group E runner up: Cameroon (Castel)
Group E loser 1: Netherlands (Bavaria)
Group E loser 2: Japan (Kirin Ichiban)

Group F winner: Slovakia (Zlaty Bazant)
Group F runner up: Italy (Peroni)
Group F loser 1: New Zealand (Speights)
Group F loser 2: Paraguay (sub Brahma from Brazil)

Group G winner: Portugal (Super Bock ) (!!!!)
Group G runner up: Cote D'Ivoire (Flag)
Group G loser 1: Brazil (Palma Louca)
Group G loser 2: Korea DPR (Taedonggang & sub Tsingtao from China)

Group H winner: Spain (Alhambra)
Group H runner up: Honduras (sub Cristal from Cuba)
Group H loser 1: Chile (sub Cusquena from Peru)
Group H loser 2: Switzerland (Swiss Mountain Beer)

Please note, dear followers, that from now on the countries competing in the Beer Tournament diverge from the countries competing in the Football Tournament. The Beer Tournament does follow the same structure as the Football Tournament (eg  winner of Group A plays runner up of Group B on Saturday) but of course the Beer Tournament follows the results of the Beer Tournament Group Stage. Stands to reason, doesn't it?