Beast Mode, or beer mode?

Forget Beast Mode and the Legion of Boom – Seattle’s chances in Super Bowl XLIX boil down to its beer.

At least that’s the conclusion of a few online observers around the country, though some of their reasoning seems a bit far afield.

For its “Super Bowl of Taste Tests” (above), conducted in California, the Huffington Post was compelled to include Olympia and Rainier Ale among its Washington picks, along with Redhook ESB, Pyramid Hefeweizen and Fish’s The Hobbit Bolg – which it admitted “should give Massachusetts, which had an all-craft lineup, a sizable advantage in the tasting.”

But Washington still won, thanks in part to the touchdown plus extra points scored by both Redhook  (“kind of cool and strange”) and Rainier, which one taster described as “a little more interesting than the typical macrobrew.”

Virginia-based The Burg broadened the geographical scope to all of the Pacific Northwest and New England, but the best it could do for Seahawks territory still was two Rogue offerings – Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout and Yellow Snow IPA – plus, strangely enough, Schilling Oak Aged Cider.

The East prevailed, though the writer allowed things might have been different had he been able to track down one of his favorites, Laughing Dog’s Sneaky Pete Imperial IPA.

(The field could be broadened by the Seahawks’ next Super Bowl appearance, assuming Anheuser-Busch starts spreading its new Elysian brand around the country.)

Crave Online also dubs Boston the better beer town based on an examination of each city’s brewing culture that pitted Elysian, Redhook and Pyramid against Boston Beer, Harpoon and Trillium.

CNN serves up a considerably more sophisticated analysis of Seattle- and Boston-area brews (including Aiways Brewing and Black Raven), though it doesn’t pick a winner.

Offering their own non-conclusive selections from both regions are Fortune (Redhook Audible Ale, Pike Naughty Nellie, Hilliard’s 12th Can); Men’s Journal (Elysian Space Dust, Pike Stout, Redhook ESB); Food and Wine (Pyramid Hefeweizen, Elysian Dragonstooth Stout, Dick’s 12 Man Pale); MarketWatch (Elysian Split Shot, Fremont 77 Select, Georgetown Lucille IPA, Audible); and Berghoff (Lucille, Elysian The Immortal IPA and Dragonstooth).