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The stage is set for Oregon’s most prestigious awards show. The lectern is moved into place, gaffers adjust the spotlight, an engineer cues up the sound and projector, the band warms up behind the curtains, and discreet sealed envelopes are readied for presenters to the evening’s winners. But this isn’t the James Beard Awards, or the Portland Art Museum’s pricey Cinema Unbound. It’s the biggest night of the year for Oregon’s most popular product: local craft beer.
2025 marks the Oregon Beer Awards’ 10th year honoring the best in what many consider the country’s top beer market. Whereas some less-glamorous industries recognize their best in private hotel ballroom ceremonies, the Oregon Beer Awards presented by Willamette Week and HyperBoost from Yakima Chief Hops goes the full beer mile. Beer peers get the Academy Awards-level treatment at Revolution Hall with emcees, comedy, touching tributes and awkward acceptance speeches. In Oregon, craft beer is a serious business, and on Thursday, April 10, it gets the red carpet moment it deserves. One might think Rev Hall’s three on-site bars would be enough, but the venue sets up additional satellite bars to accommodate demand while turning the taps over to previous years’ medal-winning beers.
But it didn’t start out this way. In 2015, OBA was a conceptual thesis of what a proper craft beer competition could be. The first year’s winners were chosen by about 30 members of the industry who gathered at WW headquarters with a couple of cases of beer, arguing among themselves 12 Angry Men-style until they could agree on winners. That year’s awards show was held at the Doug Fir Lounge with one lonely WW Arts & Culture editor, Martin Cizmar, reading off winners from the stage while brewers queued up at the bar for a beer which quickly ran out leaving the ceremony dry. That first year wasn’t perfect, but the response proved there was interest.
In 2016, OBA shifted format to a professionally judged double-blind competition among the best beers in the state. These days the standards are rigorous, with more than 90 experienced judges from up to five states evaluating over 1,000 beers from more than 100 Oregon breweries. Neither judges nor beer servers know which beers are tasted. All beers are judged in triplicate in the first round and semifinal round before judges award gold, silver and bronze in 30 categories. (Editor’s note: Ezra Johnson-Greenough is a founding OBA judge and producer.)
The winners are not just the best in the state, but the best in the world. Styles as mainstream popular as American IPA and Pilsner to nearly defunct historical beers, obscure specialties and off-the-wall experiments like a blueberry ginger beer get their time to shine. Excellence in matters other than beer styles is also rewarded in additional categories for Best Taphouse, Best Bottleshop, Best New Brewery, Best Brewpub, Best Branding or Labels, Craft Advocate of the Year, and the prestigious Hall of Fame inductee.
The OBA ceremony isn’t just reading names off a list. Top-notch production goes into each element, including a pretaped Saturday Night Live-style cold-open sketch video skewering the industry. Past examples include premises like what brewers did during COVID lockdown and making brewers read bad reviews for their beers à la Jimmy Kimmel Live!’s “Mean Tweets” segment.
Brewers and affiliates are behind every production aspect, including emceeing the ceremony and keeping the proceedings lively. For the past six years, Gigantic Brewing’s Ben Love has brought serious “The Dude” emcee energy. Since 2022, Wayfinder Beer brewmaster Natalie Baldwin has joined him onstage bringing a suave style, sometimes in handmade outfits with costume changes. Love and Baldwin gamely strut between announcing winners and roasting the industry to cheers, and depending on how the jokes land, sometimes jeers. Baldwin actually wears three hats during OBA season.
“Participating as an entrant, judge and emcee is intense,” she says. “Selecting entries, preparing beer to be judged, and judging the beer is a feat in itself, but preparing to stand onstage in front of nearly 1,000 of your peers definitely adds momentum.”
Flubs do happen, from inebriated acceptance speeches or missed opportunities to take the stage altogether when winners run out for another beer or pee break. An award was even retracted in 2022 after it was found that Deschutes Brewery’s non-alcoholic beer was crafted out of state (Mutantis Cult Brewery, which also won in the combined gluten-free and NA category, renounced its award in protest). So far there have been no Oscars-level public humiliations or violence on stage, though in 2024 tiny Underberg bottles did pelt the stage during a well-intentioned play on throwing flowers, still risking a spilt beer or two.
WW honors OBA’s first decade with an additional weeklong celebration from May 5 to 11. More than 15 award-winning breweries from Portland, Eugene and Bend will offer the pours that won them OBA medals, on draft with special $5 pricing. They run the gamut with styles as diverse as American and Japanese lagers, to classic German Altbier and Weiss, pale ales and triple IPAs for the hopheads, and even a Polish-style Baltic porter and Belgian-style farmhouse ales.
At a difficult time for the craft beer industry, when sales are shrinking and tariffs are looming, the Oregon Beer Awards and the next day’s hangover serve as a reminder of the strong community and love of the craft that keeps this state at the top of its game.
SEE IT: The 2025 Oregon Beer Awards at Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., 971-808-5094, oregonbeerawards.com. 6 pm Thursday, April 10. $26. 21+.