The AC-T‘s beer journalist Tony Kiss says Asheville is leading in an online poll about beer cities. Let’s examine.

Another online beer poll is searching for America’s best brew city – and again, Asheville is up front in the votes.

On Friday morning, Imbibe magazine’s beer poll had Asheville leading with 52.9 percent of the voting, and rival Portland, Ore., at 18.9 percent. Earlier this summer, Asheville and Portland tied for the title of Beer City USA in another Internet poll.

While Portland is famous as one of America’s beer centers, much smaller Asheville is gaining great fame as a brew center as well. Buncombe County is currently home to seven breweries, with two more under construction.

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090724/ENT/90724009

Sounds astonishing—Asheville in the lead?—until you realize that there have only been around 725 total votes cast. And, according to web-traffic charting service Alexa.com, Imbibe Magazine’s website is actually singificantly less visited than even BlogAsheville’s humble BlogSpot page, so do take the results of the poll with a grain of salt.

Mo beer is better..no doubt about it..I have lived in Asheville for 3 years and I have drank more beer in those three years than in the previous 10 years..It’s in the vortex?..or perhaps this town has more party in it than Mark Sanford in an Argentinian whore house..Sorry I mean a soul mate expo…

Does it matter?  Are any of us going to move elsewhere if it’s not true? Answer to this is the poll is not scientific so is invalid, in my humble opinion. <hic>

Barfly I saw your horse staggering around Patton Avenue after drinking a gallon of summer ale..

Keep your pet tied up dude>>>

The poll is already down. Asheville surely won.

richey - 24 July 2009 12:55 PM

Barfly I saw your horse staggering around Patton Avenue after drinking a gallon of summer ale..

Keep your pet tied up dude>>>

Not mine.  She don’t go to town.

They still haven’t announced the results of this poll. Weird.

I borrowed this from the Imbibe Magazine site.  Seems they only allowed two days of voting. 

What’s the best craft beer city in America? 
Asheville, NC:  55.1% 
Portland, OR:  18.1% 
Seattle:        7.6% 
San Diego:    5.1% 
Philadelphia:    3.6% 
San Francisco:  3.5% 
Boston:        2.4% 
Denver:        2.2% 
Chicago:      1.4% 
New York City:  0.9% 

Number of Voters:  740
First Vote:  Wednesday, 22 July 2009 10:39
Last Vote:  Friday, 24 July 2009 06:53

Where’d you find that? I looked all over that site and didn’t see it.

I answered the trivial poll they have up now (bartender vs. mixologist).  When it brought me to the results for that poll, there was a pull-down menu for other recent polls. 

To comment on the results: no way.  I think this was highly skewed being that the story ran in the AC-T and the on-line readers obviously flocked to the site.  I mentioned this in another thread….Asheville is good, just by no means the best…beerly speaking that is.