Here are the 32 American craft beers featured in this year’s Beer Madness competition, separated into four flavor brackets and listed alphabetically. They are all available year-round in the Washington area, in either bottles or cans.

Last year’s Malt category has been replaced with Crisp, to level the playing field a bit for (pale) lagers and lower ABV (alcohol by volume) brews.

CRISP

Fordham Helles Lager

Fordham Brewing Co., Dover, Del.

This golden, malt-accented lager is patterned after the everyday brews that lederhosen-clad Bavarians quaff out of their liter steins.

Bell’s Lager Beer

Bell’s Brewery, Galesburg, Mich.

Noted for its cult favorite Hopslam and its panoply of stouts, Bell’s Brewery also offers this well-balanced pale lager mellowed by a six-week maturation in the tanks.

Eliot Ness Amber Lager

Great Lakes Brewing Co., Cleveland, Ohio

The lawman of Untouchables fame served for seven years as Cleveland’s safety director; hence the brewery honored him with this ruddy amber lager in the Vienna style.

Coney Island Sword Swallower

Shmaltz Brewing Co., San Francisco and New York)

The company is best known for its He’Brew the Chosen Beer label, but it also markets a Coney Island series of offbeat lagers, including this IPA-influenced Pilsener.

FRUIT AND SPICE

Optimal Wit

Port City Brewing Co., Alexandria

Port City’s first-ever offering was this traditional Belgian-style wheat beer, made with unmalted wheat and oats and spiced with coriander, orange peel and grains of paradise.

DreamWeaver Wheat Beer

Troegs Brewing Co., Hershey, Pa.

Now ensconced in a new state-of-the-art brewery in Hershey, Troegs continues to offer this unfiltered, German-style wheat beer, with characteristic banana and clove notes.

Rayon Vert

Green Flash Brewing Co., San Diego, Calif.

After touring Belgium for “hands-on inspiration,” the Green Flash brew crew came up with this refreshing pale ale bottle-conditioned with the wild yeast Brettanomyces.

Saison Rue

The Bruery, Placentia, Calif.

Brewer Patrick Rue’s take on a rustic Franco-Belgian farmhouse ale incorporates rye for an extra spicy character and a wild yeast to add “notes of leather and earth” over time.

Exit 4

Flying Fish Brewing Co., Cherry Hill, N.J.

Last year’s Beer Madness champion is an Americanized version of a Belgian tripel (a strong golden ale), melding citrusy American hops with a clove-like spiciness. Will it become the first repeat winner?

Brooklyn Sorachi Ace

Brooklyn Brewery, New York, N.Y.

Another Belgian-style farmhouse ale, Sorachi Ace takes its name from a Japanese-bred hybrid hop variety noted for its distinctive lemony flavor.

Three Philosophers

Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, N.Y.

This blend of a Belgian-style quadrupel and the fruit ale Liefmans Kriek combines notes of chocolate and cherry. At 9.8 percent alcohol, it’s among our strongest contenders.

Siamese Twin

Uncommon Brewers, Santa Cruz, Calif.

Belgian brewing takes a detour through Southeast Asia with this category-bending brew, a Belgian-style dubbel spiced with lemon grass and kaffir lime.

HOP

The Public

DC Brau, Washington

This assertively hopped, copper-colored ale was the first beer to be brewed and canned in the District since the Christian Heurich brewery folded its tent back in 1956.

New River Pale Ale

Lost Rhino Brewing Co., Ashburn

Three additions of hops in the brew kettle and a dry-hopping in the fermenter lend a citrusy/piney aroma to this pale ale, originally brewed a few miles away at the defunct Old Dominion brewery.

Wildeman Farmhouse IPA

Flying Dog Brewery, Frederick

This IPA/saison hybrid was originally brewed to mark the 25th anniversary of In de Wildeman, an Amsterdam beer bar. It won so many plaudits that the brewery has promoted it to year-round offering.

Belgo Belgian Style India Pale Ale

New Belgium Brewing Co., Fort Collins, Colo.

Four varieties of American hops liven up this cross-cultural beer, which is fermented with a Trappist yeast strain.

Red’s Rye PA

Founders Brewing Co. Grand Rapids, Mich.