The 2026 Oregon Beer Awards
pFriem wins a double in Pilsner.
For the first time since before Covid, I attended the ceremony for the Oregon Beer Awards. Celebrate Oregon Beer sponsored one of the award categories (barrel-aged beer), and hop grower Gayle Goschie and I announced the award. That turned out to be a lot more fun and less traumatic than I expected (you can chalk up the expected trauma and my poor attendance record to being an introvert and a hermit). The crowd was rowdy but ready to cheer. Gayle is an icon of the Oregon beer industry, and she got a big cheer. I was able to draft along behind her.
The competition organizer, Ben Edmunds, spoke first, and he set a tone that I observed throughout the evening—and it suggested something about where the industry is right now, at least in Oregon. He began with the stats, discussed a bit about the competition structure, and then ended with a comment that set the tone for the evening. “The most important part of the OBAs,” he said, “is not the As, but the OBs. This is a celebration of Oregon beer.” That became a theme throughout the night, as winners expressed gratitude about being a part of their community. It wasn’t lip service, either. In a year when we forged ahead without Upright and Rogue, when the world around us seems to get ever less stable (wars, tariffs, immigration raids), breweries seemed to find solace in the bounty they did have.
For the past six years, breweries have been working to get through various crises. For most of that time, I think we all expected to emerge on the other side, which would look something like a restoration of the old normal. As I listened to the speakers and chatted with brewery folk, I sensed a kind of acceptance that we weren’t going back. There’s a mood and energy around weathering a storm, and there’s an entirely different mood and energy about settling in to weather an era. Whatever this is, it appears to be here to stay.
This year’s Hall of Fame inductee, Jerry Fechter, underscored this theme. Jerry was the founder of Old Lompoc, one of the stalwarts of Portland beer from the 1990s, but a brewery that closed back in 2019. Yet Jerry has persevered and now owns the Horse Brass, a genuine piece of American brewing history. Things go wrong, breweries close, and yet we carry on. As he spoke last night, Jerry teared up (admitting he’s prone to that), and stood in front of the crowd as a survivor. The mood last night was sweet and appreciative. People were enjoying that moment and savoring all the wonderful things about Oregon beer, freed of the pressure to change it. The night offered a warm and welcoming atmosphere, and I was fortunate to witness it.
Of course, you care more about the awards, amirite? We’ll get there, but in that spirit of appreciation of what makes Oregon a special place for beer, I want to start with the three breweries of the year (small, medium, and large). Two of the three were headed by women, which seems like such a lovely coda to the legacy of the Pink Boots Society, founded right here in Oregon. In the past decade, the number of women becoming brewers has skyrocketed, and they have proven time and again that brewing knows no gender. I know all breweries are teams, but leadership matters, so let’s have a look at those winners:
UPP Liquids (small), led by Tonya Cornett.
Wayfinder Beer (medium), led by Natalie Rose Baldwin—one of the hosts of the ceremony last night.
Breakside Brewery (large), led by Ben Edmunds.
(And not for nothing, the winner of West Coast IPA, the category with the most entrants, was also won by a woman-led brewery, Whitney Burnside’s Grand Fir.)
By the Numbers
In my Celebrate Oregon Beer database, I currently list 208 breweries, so it’s notable that 104 breweries entered beers in this year’s competition. They submitted 970 beers in 28 beer categories, meaning just 8.7% of the beers won a medal. With over 350 beers submitted in nine categories, hoppy beers were the most submitted types, which isn’t really a surprise. Yet per Ceremony Director and OBA Academy President Ezra Johnson-Greenough, 215 of the beers were lagers, which continue to gain steam in Oregon. Surprisingly, the second-largest single category was International Lagers.
Big and Notable Winners
Every winner deserves a ton of credit. I love seeing wins like the gold Salem’s Santiam Brewing notched for International Lagers (JFK Domestic Beer), the gold Bend’s newish brewery Terranaut grabbed in the experimental and historical beers category (Pudsy, a pastry sour), Ancestry’s gold for Irish Red in the red beers category, Binary’s silver with an American stout in the porter and stout category (Alt Control Delete). The McMenamins’ Bend brewery, Old St. Francis School, brought a smile to my face with their win in the fruit beer category (Pistol Peach)—way to go, old timers!
Yet some breweries walked away with a lot of medals, and that shows a commitment to excellence that deserves special recognition. Let’s have a look at those folks:
We’re used to seeing Breakside at the top of the list of winners, and 2026 was no different. Oregon’s leading IPA producer logged ten total medals, half of them gold. They also scored a very rare trifecta, sweeping the barrel aged stout category. (Recall that they used the slow time in Covid to build up their stout stocks.)
I gotta brag a bit on my wonderful sponsors, pFriem Family Brewers. They had a banner night, winning six medals, four of them gold. They also managed to go 1-2 in the pilsner category, with their flagship German-style pils taking gold, and their Czech pils coming in second. For those scoring at home, that’s six medals for pFriem Pilsner in seven years, five of them golds. Their flagship IPA also took gold in American IPA.
UPP Liquids (Bend) was one of four breweries winning five medals, including two golds, and the award for small brewery of the year.
Sunriver (Central Oregon) also took two golds among their five wins.
ColdFire (Eugene) took five medals, with one gold.
Deschutes (Bend) was in the five-medal club, and scored two wins in dark lager.
Ruse took four medals (one gold), while the three-medal club included Bend Brewing (two golds), Wayfinder (two golds, brewery of the year), Alesong (one gold), Grand Fir (one gold), StormBreaker, and Von Ebert.
It was a wonderful night—congratulations to all the winners. You can find the full list here.