The annual Craft Brewers Conference came to a close with the biennial World Beer Cup awards ceremony on May 5th with thousands of brewers from across the world in attendance. Considered one of the premiere beer competitions in the world, what sets the World Beer Cup apart from the equally prestigious Great American Beer Festival (GABF) awards is that this one is international rather than U.S. only as is the latter. The 2022 World Beer Cup was the most competitive yet with 10,542 entries making it the largest in the world, and Oregon was among the big winners with 16 medals.

The Brewers Association developed the World Beer Cup Competition in 1996 as “The Olympics of Beer Competitions,” but it hasn’t been held since 2018 thanks to the pandemic and the fact that it skips a year to take place every-other-year during the annual Craft Brewers Conference. But that is just one of the big changes in the future for WBC that changes the schedule and the longtime competition director.

There were some other real surprises for Oregon: perennial awards favorites Breakside Brewery and pFriem Family Brewers were completely shut out.

While Oregon breweries did exceedingly well with 16 medals, that’s still down from their 2018 World Beer Cup performance with 24 medals. Still, it was a great year with Bend area breweries leading the way with 8 medals between them, plus Heater Allen Brewing winning a much deserved GOLD for Pils, and StormBreaker Brewing coming in as the new king of ESB, among many, many other highlights below.

Oregon 2022 World Beer Cup Medals:

🥈SILVER Widmer Brothers Hefe (American Wheat Beer)

🥈SILVER 10 Barrel Brewing: Cucumber Crush (Field Beer)

🥈SILVER Bend Brewing Co: Mocha Porter (Coffee Stout or Porter)

🥈SILVER Deschutes Brewery: NA Black Butte Porter (Non-Alcohol Beer)

🥇GOLD Deschutes Brewery: Dee Wright (Other Strong Beer)

🥈SILVER 10 Barrel Brewing: Brilliant (American-Style Sour Ale)

🥇GOLD Heater Allen Brewing: Pils (Kellerbier or Zwickelbier)

🥇GOLD 10 Barrel Brewing: Money Cat (Contemporary American-Style Lager)

🥈SILVER Sunriver Brewing: Bondi Beach Party (Australian-Style Pale Ale)

🥇GOLD StormBreaker Brewing: Extra Stormbreaker (Extra Special Bitter)

🥈SILVER Oregon City Brewing: Fruition Cherry (Specialty Berliner-Style Weisse)

🥉BRONZE Rosenstadt Brewery: Altbier (German-Style Altbier)

🥉BRONZE Coldfire Brewing: Valley Mélange (Belgian Fruit Beer)

🥉BRONZE Three Creeks Brewing: Knotty Blonde (Golden or Blonde Ale)

🥇GOLD Pelican Brewing: Kiwanda Cream Ale (Golden or Blonde Ale)

🥉BRONZE Baerlic Brewing: Dark Thoughts Black IPA (American-Style Black Ale or American-Style Stout)

Entries were evaluated by an elite panel of 226 judges from 28 countries. Competition judging took place in 18 sessions over nine days. Judges bestowed 307 out of 309 total possible awards, reflecting the opportunity for one gold, silver, and bronze award in each of 103 beer style categories. No gold or silver was awarded in Category 68: Belgian-Style Witbier.

Overall Oregon won 5 gold medals, 7 silver medals, and 4 bronze medals

For a FULL RECAP of the 2022 WBC go here.