Oregon Beer Awards 2020 Fresh Hop competition was held this past Saturday, October 10th and six breweries will take home nine medals at the awards ceremony to be held in 2021. The 5th annual, seasonally held competition had entries from 56 breweries from across Oregon with some new and familiar winners.

Despite the pandemic, competition organizers found a safe way to conduct distanced and a nearly touchless double-blind competition. As in past years, I was among the judges at the competition alongside numerous accomplished professional brewers and cicerones.

In addition to the safety protocols that required judges to be distanced even in their own groups (often at separate tables), masks to be warn at all times other than during evaluation, and judges to serve and clean-up their own samples and stations, there were category changes as well.

In previous years the fresh hop beers were judged in one of two categories: “Hoppy” (IPA’s and the like) and “Other Fresh Hop” (saisons, lagers, oktoberfest, etc.) but with a boom in entries a third “Fresh Hop Hazy IPA and Pale Ale” category was created this year. The split in hoppy beer entries into two categories worked out well, their combined totals were virtually the same as last year and the only real drop in entries came in the “Other Fresh Hop Beers” category. Despite the pandemic, brewers made a lot of fresh hop beer in 2020.

“To me at least, that suggests that brewers were hedging their bets and cutting back on non-IPA fresh hop beers this year,” says judging competition director Ben Edmunds.

It’s worth noting that in 2019 there were 122 beers entered into the OBA Fresh Hop Competition, that’s 78 more than the Great American Beer Festival had in their catch all “Fresh Hop Beer” category last year (40 total.) Overall this was a very slight dip in entries to the OBA competition dipping down to 108, easily still the most competitive double-blind professional fresh hop beer competition I know of.

OBA 2020 Fresh Hop Medal Winners:

Hazy IPA or Pale Ale (25 entries)

GOLD - Ruse Brewing: Fresh Hop About That Time

SILVER - Breakside Brewery: What Fresh Beast

BRONZE - Sasquatch Brewing: Mouth Pillow Hazy IPA

American IPA and Pale Ale (66 entries)

GOLD - Breakside Brewery: Fresh Hop Wanderlust IPA

SILVER - Breakside Brewery: Fresh Hop India Golden Ale (IGA)

BRONZE - Three Creeks Brewing: Conelick’r

Other Fresh Hop Beer (17 entries)

GOLD - Breakside Brewery: Fresh Hop Sterling Pils

SILVER - Zoiglhaus Brewing: Fresh Hop Zoigl-Kolsch

BRONZE - Baerlic Brewing: Fresh Hop Pioneer ESB

Four of the six breweries to win medals in the 2020 competition have also done so in years past, suggesting that an elite few are beginning to master these types of beers. Zoiglhaus won a gold in 2019 for a different beer - Oktoberfresh, and a silver this year for the fresh hop Kolsch. Also last year, Breakside Brewery’s Fresh Hop Sterling Pils was awarded a silver and What Fresh Beast a bronze, they both leveled up this year. Back in 2017 Baerlic Brewing’s fresh hop Pioneer ESB won a gold and three years later is coming home with a bronze. And in 2018 Sasquatch Brewing’s fresh hop Mouth Pillow won a gold and has came back this year with a bronze.

Amongst this years winners two breweries medal in this competition for the first time: Portland’s Ruse Brewing makes a big gold medal splash with the elusive fresh hop version of their Chuck’s Hop Shop collaboration About That Time. And, Three Creeks Brewing’s annual seasonal favorite Cone Lick’r had an especially good year earning a bronze.

This years Fresh Hop competition winners will receive their medals at a pandemic reinvented Oregon Beer Awards ceremony in February 2021.