A pilsner took Best of Show at the Virginia Craft Beer Cup, and no IPA reached the podium
Selvedge Brewing's Batiste won Best of Show out of 347 entries. Fine Creek Brewing of Powhatan is Virginia Brewery of the Year. The top three were a pilsner, a smoked beer and a Belgian wit.
Selvedge Brewing of Charlottesville won Best of Show at the 2026 Virginia Craft Beer Cup with Batiste, a Bavarian-style pilsner at 5.2% and 41 IBU, lagered nine weeks. It also took gold in the Pilsner category.
Fine Creek Brewing Company of Powhatan is Virginia Brewery of the Year.
Winners were announced Monday, August 10 at the Virginia Craft Beer Summit & Gala. The competition drew 347 entries, judged at The Veil Brewing Co.’s operations facility by 36 judges, 94.4% of them holding BJCP rank.
(A note on spelling: the beer is Batiste. Two Virginia outlets published it as “Baptiste.” The brewery and the Guild both use Batiste.)
Read the podium, not just the winner
Best of Show gold went to a pilsner. Silver went to The Answer Brewpub’s Rauchpause, a smoked beer. Bronze went to Port City’s Optimal Wit, a Belgian witbier.
There is no IPA in the top three. For a state whose taproom boards have been IPA-first for a decade, that is the interesting fact in the results, and it is worth stating carefully: this is one competition, judged blind, in a year when the Guild ran roughly eight lager categories out of thirty-two, about the same as previous years. Neither the Guild nor any outlet has called it a lager trend. We are not going to either. But a nine-week-lagered pilsner beating 346 other beers is a data point about where brewing attention is going, and the beers that placed behind it were a rauchbier and a wit rather than another hop showcase.
The 2025 Best of Show went to St. George Brewing’s Knight’s Respite, and Brewery of the Year to Caiseal Beer & Spirits.
Who won the most
Fine Creek’s medal haul was gold in American Wild Ale for 2026 Bière De Printemps, gold in Strong Ale for its Wheatwine, and silver in European Sour for a Barrel Aged Sour Red, plus the Brewery of the Year title. Owner Mark Benusa and head brewer Brian Mandeville run it out of The Mill at Fine Creek, a wedding venue in Powhatan where the brewery launched in 2017.
By our count of the published table, the deepest medal counts were:
| Brewery | Medals |
|---|---|
| Three Leg Run | 4 (1 gold, 3 bronze) |
| Fine Creek Brewing | 3, plus Brewery of the Year |
| The Answer Brewpub | 3, including Best of Show silver |
| Heliotrope Brewery | 3 |
| Starr Hill Brewery | 3 |
| Strangeways Brewing | 3 |
| Caboose Brewing | 3 |
| Harvest Gap Brewery | 3 |
| Caiseal Beer & Spirits | 3 |
| The Farm Brewery at Broad Run | 3 |
The Guild does not publish a leaderboard, so that tally is ours off its results table.
Regional read
Charlottesville had a very good night. Beyond Selvedge’s Best of Show, the Charlottesville Ale Trail counted Decipher Brewing (gold in Pale Ale, silver in Porter), SuperFly (gold in Porter and gold in British Bitters) and Rockfish (silver in American Wheat) among its medalists. The Ale Trail notes this is the second Best of Show from its breweries in five years, after Decipher in 2022.
Richmond had breadth rather than a headline. Richmond BizSense counted at least ten Richmond-area breweries with medals, including Fine Creek, The Answer, Strangeways, Hardywood, Bingo and Crazy Rooster.
Two other things in the results
The Guild added a Pro-Am category for 2026, pairing breweries with homebrewers. Gold went to Heliotrope Brewery with Stephen Goadhouse for Brave Helios, Wake Up Your Steeds.
And the award with the best name in Virginia beer, The Most Revolutionary Brew in Virginia, went to Afterglow Brewing for Declaration of Fermentation.