A Look at OC’s 2025 and 2026 GABF Competition Results

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2026 the great outdoors! credit Brewer’s Association

Earlier this year, this site was hacked, and I lost a few posts, including OC’s incredible 2025 results. The best ever, 18 medals. Here’s a recap of 2025 and 2026, as well as a shocking look at the overall number of entries at the competition:

2026: Five medals, three breweries

Gold

  • Doom Sludge, Green Cheek (Costa Mesa), Specialty IPA
  • Nueve Grados, riip beer co. (Huntington Beach), Mexican-Style Light Lager

Bronze

  • Zombi Shark Fight, Green Cheek (Costa Mesa), Italian-Style Pilsener
  • Chance Favors the Prepared Mind, Green Cheek (Orange), Imperial IPA
  • Pazifik Coast Highway, Beachwood Brewing (Huntington Beach), German-Style Pilsener

Made the final table: everywhere (Orange) in Juicy or Hazy IPA, a 260-entry category, and Brewing Reserve of California (Costa Mesa) in Maerzen, a 185-entry category.

2026 aha moments

  • Green Cheek took three of OC’s five medals across three different styles.
  • Our winners are proven. Doom Sludge took silver last year and moves up to gold. Zombi Shark Fight won gold in 2024. Chance Favors the Prepared Mind won World Beer Cup gold in 2024. Nueve Grados took World Beer Cup silver in April, and riip follows its 2024 Brewery of the Year win with a gold.
  • Lagers and pilsners had a good year. Three of the five medals are lagers or pilsners.
  • Beachwood keeps its medal streak going since 2012!

2025: Eighteen medals, fourteen breweries

Gold: 1886 Brewing (Record Beer, Brown Porter), everywhere (tracing the departed, Juicy or Hazy Imperial IPA), Left Coast (Trunk Box, Brown Ale), Pizza Port San Clemente (Way Heavy, Scottish-Style Ale), Unsung (Chaos Erupts, Strong Pale Ale)

Silver: Beachwood (Moooving On), Bottle Logic (Darkstar November), Docent (Pint of Soul), Golden Road Anaheim (Guava Cart), Green Cheek (Doom Sludge and Saison for Papa), Los Molinos (Coast Molinos), Radiant (Gaining Momentum), Tustin Brewing (Blimp Hangar Porter)

Bronze: Docent (Super Tonic), Green Cheek (DDH The Other Brian), Radiant (A Dark in the Light), Station Craft (Californios)

2025 aha moments

  • Eighteen medals is well above OC’s usual 5 to 12.
  • Dark beers had a big year. Seven of the 18 medals were stouts, porters, or black ales, plus a brown ale gold.
  • Green Cheek led with 3, and Docent and Radiant each took 2.

The bigger story: the GABF keeps shrinking

OC’s medals aren’t the only numbers that moved.

  • 2022: 9,904 GABF entries from 2,154 breweries
  • 2025: 8,315 GABF entries from 1,555 breweries and cideries
  • 2026: 7,267 GABF entries from 1,300 breweries and cidermakers

That’s about 27% fewer entries and 40% fewer breweries than 2022. Those 2025 and 2026 counts include cider (added in 2024), plus Collaboration and Pro-Am entries and, new this year, hop water. Beer-only entries have fallen further than the headline numbers show. The judging effort shrank too, from nine days in 2024 to seven in 2025 to six this year, with 225 judges.

My take: when a competition adds ciders and hop water while beer entries and the brewery count keep falling, the GABF is stretching to hold its size. The entry limit was also lifted this year, yet the field still shrank. OC’s brewers keep winning anyway, which says a lot about the beer being made here.

Congrats to every OC brewery that medaled, and to everyone who made the final table!

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