OK, that’s it. I’m tired of including Select 55, that piss-water of a beer, in our weekly count-down feature. Starting this week, I’m officially omitting the perpetually clicked-upon item and noting, with an asterisk (*), where it would have fallen in the Top 5, assuming it would.

With that said, here are your most-read blog posts from the week:

1. Dogfish Head & Sierra Nevada’s Collaboration Ale, Life & Limb, Coming Soon
2. Nori Amaya’s Friends and Fans Express Their Grief on Her Facebook Page (*)
   
3. P&C Market Takes Upscale Bodegas to a New Level
4. Best Food Writing 2009 Due in Bookstores Today
5. Dish of the Week: Tacos at La Placita in Hyattsville
   

Well, sort of. At about the 1:56 mark in this segment on restaurant critics and anonymity, CNN captures a screen shot of your beloved Young & Hungry blog. I’m still trying to figure out whether CNN used Young & Hungry because we are a marvel of search-engine optimization or because they were trying to suggest that Y&H was cheap and tawdry — for merely writing about Sam Sifton’s new gig at the Times and rounding-up what others thought about it as well.

Or maybe we just look good on camera.

Suck it, Gawker!

Well, look who’s back at No. 1? Our old friend Select 55, who just couldn’t stand being out of the limelight for a couple of weeks.

This week’s top blog posts feature a couple of hard-charging items published late in the week, including a campaign to protect Rock Art Brewery from corporate beer behemoths on the warpath.

Here’s what you liked:

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Rasika Will Be the First Ethnic Restaurant to Earn 4 Stars from Tom Sietsema
3. Sietsema’s 2009 Dining Guide Makes Premature Appearance on Web
4. When Should a Critic Just Trash a Place?
5. A True Monster Attacks Rock Art Brewery — Can Twitter and Facebook Help?
   

Y&H is thrilled to report that Select 55 has been dethroned — by another beer, Guinness, which celebrated a birthday yesterday.

Let’s raise a glass to Select 55’s long run and to the new king of the Y&H blog.

This week’s most-read posts:

1. Raise a Toast to Guinness’ 250th Anniversary
2. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
3. Joe Englert Offers a REAL Tribute to the Dean of D.C. Liquor Lawyers
4. Two Things Y&H Didn’t Expect to See at Sou’Wester’s Opening Party: Frank Ruta and Dancing
5. Stand in Judgment of Georgetown Chefs!
   

Y&H will give you three guesses as to what the most-read post was this week. Two of them won’t count.

That’s right, once again, a certain low-cal product from Bud leads the pack, for the umpteenth week in a row. This is the dark side of search-engine optimization.

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Which Sources Do You Trust for Restaurant Commentary?
3. White House Farmers Market to Open Tomorrow
4. D.C. Bloggers: Help Make Next Month ‘Blogtoberfest’
5. Which Sources Do Readers Trust for Restaurant Commentary? The Ts Have It.
   

Photo by alceste99 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

This blog has gone to Hell, and readers are taking Select 55 with it. For Christ’s sake, people, can we get over this Budweiser post, which tops the list for the third straight week?

The most-read items for the week:

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Not So Fast: There’s No Deal for a Ray’s Hell Burger in Adams Morgan
3. No Hell Burger for Adams Morgan, but a Ray’s the Steaks for NE
4. Did Vidalia Use “Inferior” Ingredients During Restaurant Week?
5. Drool List: Pizzeria Paradiso at Dupont Circle
   

Your semi-humble Y&H is taking a break before his brain turns into congee. I will be out for the next two weeks, but in my place, Editor Andrew has devised something that may mean the end of my job permanently.

Starting Monday, Y&H will morph into Two Week Bender. For the next couple of  weeks, this space will be devoted to fermented beverages, distilled beverages, anything liquid that alters your brain chemistry for a few glorious hours. Well, anything short of drain cleaners and the like, I guess.

The line-up of writers is top shelf. Not only will the blog’s usual beer scribes — Orr Shtuhl (aka the Beerspotter) and Tammy Tuck and Bruce Falconer (aka the Lagerheads) — be on board for the ride, but we also have a couple of ringers: man-about-town Mike Riggs and master mixologist/historian Derek Brown, whose writings on cocktails for The Atlantic are first-rate.

I hope y’all enjoy reading about booze for a couple of weeks, because I’m actually going to be imbibing some.

There’s no mistaking that Young & Hungry readers love their beer. They love it in a glass. They love it in a growler. And they love it in print. The single most-read item of the week — by a wide, wide margin — was Beerspotter Orr Shtuhl’s post on the inaugural D.C. Beer Week.

I predict it will remain a popular post for awhile, too. Because Shtuhl’s constantly updating it as new information arises. Keep it bookmarked.

Here’s what Y&H readers liked this week:

1. Another D.C. Beer Week? Yes, Please.
2. Strip Club Food: Not as Nasty as You’d Think
3. Spike Mendelsohn Evicted from His Capitol Hill Rental House (A surprise returnee to the list, likely due to the First Lady’s recent visit to Good Stuff Eatery.)
4. Birch & Barley Should Tap Its First Keg in September
5. Is the ‘Times’ Saying Anonymity Doesn’t Matter Anymore in a Dining Critic?
   

During a week in which when we learned that the D.C. area had placed not one but two toques on the upcoming season of Top Chef, I’m pleased to report that Y&H readers were far more interested in the closing of an icon, Nathans in Georgetown. We are not, it seems, complete tools of the reality TV industry.

In fact, the second most-read item this week concerned food stamps at farmers markets. I’d say all this fall-of-the-American-empire talk is way premature.

The most-read blog posts of the week:

1. Breaking News: Nathans in Georgetown Is Closing
2. FRESHFARM to Double Value of Food Stamps to Break the Yuppie Stranglehold on Farmers Markets
3. Food Blogger Kim O’Donnel Is Leaving WaPo for True/Slant
4. A Tale of Two White House Gardens: Toxic or Not?
5. Young & Hungry Dining Guide by the Day: Granville Moore’s
   

I knew this day would eventually come. The beer geeks have taken over the Y&H blog! With their unholy alliance of timely information and sheer ambition, they and their kind (those stupid vintage beer commercials!) have captured the top three spots this week.

Here, without further ado, are the most read posts for the week:

1. Vintage TV Beer Commercials
2. D.C.’s a Great Beer City, Chapter 1
3. Upcoming D.C. Beer Events
4. Landrum Releases ‘The Catch’ to Bring On More Burgers
5. Food News You Can Use: Playing Catch-Up Edition

Photo by Darrow Montgomery