For Which Beer You Think Should Be Named West Michigans Favorite Beer: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the West Michigan's Favorite Beer poll is and who runs it

The program's full title is Vote For Which Beer You Think Should Be Named West Michigan's Favorite Beer, and it belongs to 97.9 WGRD, a commercial radio station based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The station brands these listener votes as a way to settle local arguments once and for all, and the beer edition is the clearest example: listeners nominate their favorites, the nominations become a ballot, and the public votes until one beer is crowned the region's favorite.

The ballot runs on wgrd.com, the station's own domain, with no outside polling service in front of it. That matters for anyone organizing support, because every rule you need, from the close time to the rate limit, is printed on the same page that carries the vote button. There is no external platform with its own terms layered on top of the station's.

In the vertical this is a best-of contest in the business category: the thing being ranked is a local product, beer, and the ranking is done entirely by the public. The sponsor field on the page is the program itself, the publisher is the station, and the market is West Michigan with Grand Rapids at its center.

Program facts at a glance

Everything a supporter needs sits behind one address, which is why the ballot URL is worth bookmarking for the whole of the June window.

Which editions are confirmed and when voting falls

The program has five confirmed edition years: 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Each one ran as a single June ballot on wgrd.com, which makes the beer vote an annual mid-year fixture on the station's calendar. The station's own contest pages reach back further than that confirmed run, so the 2022 start of the confirmed list is where the verifiable trail begins, not necessarily where the poll itself began.

Within a cycle, the shape is consistent. The June window is the only month the ballot has ever carried, and an earlier cycle's printed text gave the most precise dates the program has published: voting ran until 12:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 29, 2017. That text also shows the nomination round had already closed by voting time, since the page told readers their favorites had been nominated and the vote was now the deciding step.

What the current ballot does not fix in advance is the day-level calendar. The precise open and close days, and whether any round structure exists between nomination and final voting, are the kind of details WGRD prints on the live ballot itself, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Treat the June month as the planning anchor and the page as the deadline.

One practical note follows from those edition years: because every confirmed ballot has kept the June slot, a brewery or fan camp can prepare its supporter list in spring and be ready the moment the ballot appears, without waiting for the station to announce a start date elsewhere.

How a supporter votes on the WGRD beer ballot today

Voting in the WGRD beer poll takes four steps. A supporter opens the ballot page on wgrd.com, scans the list of nominated beers, selects the one they want crowned West Michigan's Favorite Beer, and submits. The vote is a plain public click, and the ballot text from a past cycle printed the rate rule right next to it: one vote per hour. That hourly limit is the only vote frequency the program has ever stated, and it rewards camps that can bring supporters back repeatedly instead of counting on a single click.

The ballot runs on the station's own domain, and no third-party poll account stands between the supporter and the vote button. The page loads, the beers are listed, the pick is made. Anyone who has voted in the station's other listener polls, such as the favorite tattoo artist ballot under the same WGRD branding, will recognize the format immediately.

The sequence for the current cycle runs: find the ballot during the June window, read which beers made the nomination cut, vote for yours, and return as often as the printed rate rule allows until the station closes the poll. The winner is announced as the crowned favorite once voting ends, and past cycles have kept the same page live as the results home.

Supporters who want their vote to count should check the page for any eligibility wording before mobilizing a group. The station prints its own terms on the ballot, and the printed rules there are the ones that govern, not assumptions carried over from any other radio poll.

How this beer vote sits beside its Michigan neighbours

Within Michigan's crowded best-of landscape, this poll occupies a narrow and useful lane: a single-category, single-market ballot run by the radio station itself. It differs from the big regional roundups such as Best of Northern Michigan or the Detroit Community Choice Awards, both of which spread across many categories and much wider geography. Here the entire contest is beer, and the entire market is West Michigan.

Grand Rapids has its own publication-led rival in Grand Rapids Magazine Best of GR, which covers the same city with a magazine's broader category list. A brewery competing in both faces two different ballots with two different supporter bases, and neither ballot credits a vote cast on the other. The same separation applies across the state's other reader ballots, including the Detroit News Readers' Choice, the DN Readers Choice Awards and the Detroit Music Awards.

Closest of all is the station's sibling programme, West Michigan's Favorite Tattoo Artist, run by the same publisher on the same site. The two share the WGRD branding, the nominate-then-vote shape and the West Michigan market, but they are separate contests: a vote for a tattoo artist does nothing for a beer, and each ballot answers to its own cycle on wgrd.com.

What makes this one distinctive is the combination of a tight subject, a radio audience primed for local loyalty arguments, and a host that keeps everything on its own domain. For a Grand Rapids brewery, it is the most focused public vote in its home market.

Strengthening support for a beer in the WGRD poll

Support in this poll compounds because of the hourly mechanic the ballot has printed in the past: one vote per hour means a devoted fan is worth many clicks across the June window, while a casual one is worth a handful. Build your push around return visits. Post the ballot link in the morning, remind at lunch, remind again in the evening, and spell the beer's name exactly as the ballot lists it so every click lands on the right nominee.

Ground the ask in local pride. The page itself frames the vote as settling a West Michigan argument once and for all, which gives breweries a natural message: this is the region's decision, not a national ranking. Ask taproom regulars directly and repeat the ask; a reminder the next day reliably outperforms a single announcement.

Be honest about the rules before scaling up. The station prints its terms on its own ballot, and vote software or bulk automation risks deletion or worse under most station policies, so keep human supporters returning hourly rather than chasing shortcuts. Should paid support be on your mind, know first what paid help does and does not deliver by reading buy votes online, and check the ballot's current printed rules before any spend, because the organizer's page governs what counts.