If the words “beer” and “championship” belong in the same sentence anywhere in America, it’s here. The U.S. Open Beer Championship isn’t just another medal ceremony with a folding table and a box of ribbons — it’s the third-largest beer competition in the country, judging beer across more than 180 categories and subcategories, with entries pouring in from breweries as far-flung as Alaskan Brewing in Juneau and Damm Brewing all the way from Barcelona, Spain.
Started in 2009, the competition was founded by the former owners, brewers, and directors of Friends Brewing, including Dow Scoggins, Jon Downing, and Rick Roberts, and has spent nearly two decades growing into one of the most respected — and most delightfully chaotic — beer judgings in the world. Over 140 (now 180+) styles get judged every year, medals are shaped like little beer steins, and the whole thing wraps up every July with a Grand National Champion crowned based on total medal points across the field.
Who Took Home the Big Trophy in 2026?
This year’s Grand National Champion is Third Eye Brewing of Hamilton, Ohio, and they didn’t just win — they made history doing it. Third Eye hauled in five gold, two silver, and two bronze medals, for nine total medals, tying the all-time record for most medals won by a single brewery in one year (a mark set by Maui Brewing back in 1990). Their five golds also set a brand-new record for most gold medals won by one brewery in a single competition. This is Third Eye’s second Grand National Champion title in the competition’s 18-year history.
Their gold medal lineup reads like a greatest-hits album:
Mocha Operandi – Breakfast Stout
Double Astral – Chocolate Beer
Unleashed Potential – Coffee Beer
Kelly’s Private Stash Barley Wine – took gold in two separate barleywine subcategories
Rounding out the podium: River North Brewery of Denver, Colorado took second place with four golds (including the deliciously named “Bucket of Bolts” strong ale and “Nightmare Fuel” dark coffee beer), and Feather Falls Brewing of Oroville, California — yes, the brewery attached to a casino — grabbed third with four golds of its own, including an imperial porter called “Angry Mama Bear.”
Breweries of the Year, by Size Class
Because a 200-barrel nano-brewery and a 20,000-barrel regional powerhouse aren’t exactly playing the same game, the U.S. Open also crowns Brewery of the Year across seven output tiers:
0–250 barrels: Sandy Springs Brewing Co, Ohio
251–500 barrels: Forgotten Road Ales, North Carolina
501–1,000 barrels: Wild Heart Brewing Co, South Carolina
1,001–2,000 barrels: River North Brewery, Colorado
2,001–5,000 barrels: Third Eye Brewing, Ohio
5,001–15,000 barrels: Altstadt Brewery, Texas
15,000+ barrels: Alvarado Street Brewery, California
Ohio’s Big Moment
Ohio beer fans have plenty to celebrate this year. Not only did Third Eye Brewing take the top overall prize, but Ohio breweries like Rhinegeist, Masthead, Municipal Brew Works, Streetside Brewery, and Southern Ohio Brewing all picked up gold medals across categories ranging from American IPA to Irish Dry Stout to American Black Ale. For a state that doesn’t always get top billing in national craft beer conversations, that’s a serious flex.
The Funniest Beer Names of the Year
Every year, U.S. Open judges unofficially rank entries by a very scientific metric: laughter volume. This year’s top contenders for funniest name include a North Carolina IPA called “Middle Finger to Monday,” an Ohio brew titled “Beaver on a Big Wheel IPA,” and an Oklahoma City lager that goes by “The Spanish Word for Mango is Mango.” Honorable mention goes to Ohio’s own Narrow Path Brewing for “Ghost Railroad IPA,” which, if you ask us, sounds like it belongs on the side of a caboose.
Top 10 funniest names were:
1. Middle Finger to Monday IPA — Bright Penny Brewing (North Carolina)
2. Beaver on a Big Wheel IPA — Southern Ohio Brewing (Ohio)
3. Tarty to the Party Marion Sour Ale — Wild Ride Brew (Oregon)
4. Yaba Daba Brew! — Three Blondes Brewing (Michigan)
5. The Spanish Word for Mango is Mango – Flix Brewhouse – OK City(Oklahoma)
6. Effed Up Quad – River North Brewery(Colorado)
7. Hop Drop n’ Roll IPA — NoDa Brewing Company (North Carolina)
8. Creamy Fookin’ Pints – Liquid Mechanics Brewing(Colorado)
9. Mermaid Milk Stout — Marker 48 Brewing (Florida)
10. Skool House Bock — Moontown Brewing (Indiana)
10. George Sloshington Pilsner – Mutation Brewing(Georgia)
Honorable Mention(My son, Cameron’s Favorite)
Ghost Railroad IPA — Narrow Path Brewing (Ohio)
A Category for Every Kind of Beer Drinker
What makes the U.S. Open stand out from other big-name competitions is sheer category breadth. This isn’t just IPAs and stouts — although there’s plenty of both. Judges this year sorted through everything from Mexican-style lagers and Baltic porters to gluten-free beers, tea beers, peanut beers, and even a dedicated kids’ and adults’ root beer category. The competition also keeps adding new categories as trends shift: Rice Lager debuted in 2026 after judges noticed a wave of rice-lager entries crowding the International Pilsner category, following the introduction of Imperial Hazy IPAs, Barrel-Aged German Lagers, and Near Gluten-Free beers in recent years.
Pink Boots Blend Category
There’s also a category with real heart behind it: the Pink Boots Blend Category, brewed using a special hop blend created by the Pink Boots Society and Yakima Chief Hops. This year’s gold went to Project Halo Brewing of Fulshear, Texas, for their Maverick Imperial Hazy IPA. Every entry fee in the category gets matched by the U.S. Open and donated to the Pink Boots Society Scholarship Fund, which supports women and non-binary professionals in the fermentation industry — over $12,000 raised through the category so far.
We have 8 judging tables for 32 judges. Click the picture to the U.S. Open live.
Welcome to “The Barn”
All those thousands of entries have to go somewhere, and that somewhere is The Barn — the U.S. Open’s home base and event center in Oxford, Ohio. It’s a converted 5,000-square-foot Amish agricultural barn that Scoggins transformed into a full-blown competition headquarters, complete with two 420-square-foot coolers to keep thousands of entries at the right temperature, a nano brewery, and a dedicated whiskey office for the U.S. Open’s spirits judging. Tucked into the property is also a six-hole putt-putt course built for special needs kids to have a place to play, including Scoggins’ own son, Cameron. It’s the kind of detail that sums up the whole operation: a serious, third-largest-in-the-country beer competition that still runs on volunteers, pizza, and a genuine sense of community.
The ALS Beer Bucket Challenge
Every beer competition ends up with leftover product — cases and cases of cold beer that’s already been poured, sampled, and judged, with nowhere left to go. Founder Dow Scoggins turned that leftover beer into a cause: the ALS Beer Bucket Challenge, a riff on the viral Ice Bucket Challenge that swaps ice water for coolers and buckets of the competition’s leftover cold beer. The U.S. Open donates a portion of its competition proceeds to the ALS Foundation, and as part of the challenge, it’s calling out the other major beer competitions in the country — the Great American Beer Festival, the World Beer Cup, and the New York State Craft Beer Competition — to step up and match the effort.
It’s a fittingly irreverent, big-hearted move from a competition that got its start on pizza money and a brewer’s flight from Canada: put the extra beer to work for a cause instead of pouring it down the drain.
Why It Matters (Beyond Bragging Rights)
For breweries, a U.S. Open medal is more than a shiny sticker for the taproom window — it’s a data point judged blind, style-by-style, by trained beer judges evaluating aroma, appearance, flavor, and overall balance against the official style guidelines. For drinkers, the medal list doubles as a shopping list: if you’re standing in a bottle shop wondering what to grab, “gold medal winner, U.S. Open Beer Championship” is about as reliable a signal as you’ll find on a six-pack.
So next time you crack open a cold one, take a second to check the label. There’s a decent chance it already has a stein-shaped medal to its name.
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