The Beer Championships Finalists Are In — And Australia’s New Beer Competition Is Doing Things Differently
Earlier this year, Beer Down Under reported on a new Australian beer competition promising to turn the traditional beer awards model on its head.
No endless lists of Gold, Silver and Bronze medals.
Instead, The Beer Championships promised something much simpler:
Finalists and Champions.
Now the judging is complete and the first major results are in.
A total of 262 beers from 74 Australian breweries entered the inaugural competition, with 42 beers surviving the judging process to become finalists.
That’s six beers in each of seven categories.
And there are some fascinating matchups.
A different kind of beer competition
When The Beer Championships was announced earlier this year, one of the most interesting aspects was its decision to abandon the traditional medal model.
Most major beer competitions assess beers against style guidelines and award medals according to the scores they achieve.
That means there can be multiple Gold, Silver and Bronze medal winners within a category.
The Beer Championships takes a different approach.
The organisers want recognition to be more selective — and ultimately more meaningful to the person standing in front of a fridge deciding which beer to buy.
The competition originally launched with 15 proposed categories, but these were consolidated before judging into seven broad, consumer-focused categories:
Australian Lager
Lager
Australian Pale
Pale
IPA
Dark
Lower Alcohol
Judges first assess whether beers meet the requirements to progress before subsequent knockout-style judging reduces the field.
Ultimately, only six beers become finalists in each category.
Then comes the final step.
One beer from each category will become Champion.
There will also be Champion Brewery awards for small, medium and large breweries.
Big breweries versus small
One of the things that makes the inaugural finalists particularly interesting is the extraordinary range of breweries sitting alongside each other.
Perhaps nowhere is that more obvious than Australian Lager.
Great Northern Original — one of the biggest-selling beers in the country — has reached the final six.
Sitting alongside it is Launch Lager from tiny Tasmanian brewery Bicheno Brewing.
That’s exactly what blind beer judging should be capable of producing.
Forget the size of the brewery.
Forget whether somebody calls it craft, independent or mainstream.
Forget the marketing budget.
What’s in the glass?
And which beer do the judges believe is best?
THE 2026 BEER CHAMPIONSHIPS FINALISTS
Australian Lager
Bicheno Brewing (BICH) — Launch Lager
Alby / Good Drinks — Alby Draught
Beerfarm — Lager
Deep Elite — Periscope Lager Draught
Great Northern — Original
travla — Australian Full Strength Lager
Lager
CBCo — Goldy Lager
Bright Brewery — Alpine Lager
Eagle Bay Brewing — West Coast Pilsner
Bicheno Brewing (BICH) — ItalianTi Ama – Pilsner
Devilbend — 120 Day Pilsner
Love Shack — Love Shack Lager
Australian Pale
Slipstream Brewing — Laguna Pacific Ale
Balter — XPA
Otherside Brewing — Rhapsody
Philter Brewing — Philter XPA
BentSpoke Brewing — Barley Griffin
Big Little Brewing — Big Little Pale Ale
Pale
Tar Barrel — Corner Pale
CBCo Brewing — CBCo Pale Ale
Blackman’s Brewery — Mervyn
Blackman’s Brewery — Ernie
Bicheno Brewing (BICH) — Juicy Pale
Broulee Brewhouse — Pale Ale
IPA
Urban Alley Brewery — Misdirection
Mountain Goat — Bract To The Brewer
Moo Brew — IPA
Slipstream Brewing — G-Force IPA
Ripple Brewing — Field Day #5
Margaret River Beer Co — In The Pines
Dark
Blackman’s Brewery — Arthur
Little Creatures — White Rabbit Dark Ale
Stomping Ground — Bunker Porter
Aether Brewing — Black XPA
Slipstream Brewing — Stealth Mode Black IPA
Mitta Mitta Brewing — Black Velvet Revolution
Lower Alcohol
Shambles Brewery — Session IPA – Baggy Green
Alby — Alby Crisp
Grainfed Brewing — Game Day Lager
Gage Roads — Yeah Buoy
Love Shack — Love Shack Mid Red Ale
Shambles Brewery — Hazy Mid – Singularity
Some breweries are already standing out
Reaching the final six with one beer is an achievement.
Doing it three times suggests something else.
Three breweries have managed to place three beers among the 42 finalists.
Tiny Tasmanian brewery Bicheno Brewing has finalists in Australian Lager, Lager and Pale.
Blackman’s Brewery has two beers competing against each other in Pale — Mervyn and Ernie — as well as Arthur in Dark.
And Queensland’s Slipstream Brewing has reached three different finals with Laguna Pacific Ale, G-Force IPA and Stealth Mode Black IPA.
There are also breweries with two finalists, including CBCo, Love Shack, Shambles and Alby.
An interesting test for beer awards
The Beer Championships was created around a question that goes beyond simply deciding which beer tastes best.
Do beer awards actually help breweries sell beer?
The organisers argue that one of the problems with traditional awards is what happens after the medals are handed out.
A brewery wins an award.
It posts the result on social media.
Maybe a medal sticker appears on the can.
And a few days later everybody moves on.
The Beer Championships is attempting to create an extended awards season instead.
The finalists have been announced almost two months before the Champions.
That gives breweries time to promote being among the final six, while the competition itself can introduce drinkers to the beers and build towards the final announcement.
The ultimate aim is not simply recognition.
It’s helping consumers discover those beers.
So who wins?
We don’t know yet.
And that’s deliberately part of the format.
The 42 finalists now remain in the spotlight until Champions Night on October 14 at Brunswick Town Hall in Melbourne.
That’s when one beer from each of the seven categories will be crowned Champion.
We’ll also discover the Champion small, medium and large breweries.
So we’re down to:
262 beers.
74 breweries.
42 finalists.
Seven categories.
And eventually…
Seven Champion beers.
Beer Down Under will be watching on October 14 to find out who takes the inaugural titles.
