Our Brewery Awards 2026 | A Year of Independent Recognition

2026 has brought another remarkable collection of independent awards for Our Brewery in Randalstown, Northern Ireland.

Across the World Beer Awards 2026, Great Taste Awards 2026 and Irish Quality Food & Drink Awards 2026, our beers received 24 awards and recognitions across three major competitions.

What matters most to us is the breadth of that recognition. It includes the beers at the heart of our core range alongside barrel-aged, mixed-fermentation, sour and wild beers that can take years rather than weeks to reach the point where we are ready to release them.

We don't brew beer to win awards. Our approach is to concentrate on ingredients, fermentation, process, judgement and time, and release a beer when we believe it is ready. Independent judging gives us another measure of whether that work is translating into the glass.

Irish Quality Food & Drink Awards 2026

Our latest results came at the Irish Quality Food & Drink Awards 2026, where four beers from our core range received Gold, Silver and Bronze awards.

  • Gold — Pressure to Pick — Italian Pilsner
  • Silver — Do You Wanna Funk? — NEIPA
  • Bronze — Hang Up Your Hang Ups — Hazy IPA
  • Bronze — Modern Love — Pale Ale

These results are particularly meaningful because these are beers we brew regularly and put in front of customers week after week.

Pressure to Pick taking Gold is another significant result for our Italian Pilsner, while Do You Wanna Funk? received Silver and Hang Up Your Hang Ups and Modern Love each received Bronze.

Four different beers, four different expressions of what we do, and recognition across the core range.

World Beer Awards 2026

Earlier in the year, 11 different Our Brewery beers were recognised at the World Beer Awards 2026.

Four were named Ireland Country Winners in their respective categories, with a further three Ireland Silver medals and four Ireland Bronze medals.

Ireland Country Winners / Gold

  • Prime Time of Your Life — Pale Beer, Belgian Style Triple
  • Séasúr — Sour & Wild Beer, Sour & Wild Ale
  • Souvenir de Cassis — Flavoured Beer, Flavoured Wild & Sour Beer
  • Do You Wanna Funk? — IPA, Milkshake IPA / New England IPA

Ireland Silver

  • In Tension — Sour & Wild Beer, Sour & Wild Ale
  • Light Up Gold — IPA, American Style
  • It's Own Pace — Sour & Wild Beer, Flanders Red Ale

Ireland Bronze

  • Modern Love — Pale Beer, American Style Pale Ale
  • Pressure to Pick — Lager, Hoppy Pilsner
  • Hang Up Your Hang Ups — IPA, Session
  • Low Land — Sour & Wild Beer, Flemish Style Red Ale or Oud Bruin

The four Country Winners subsequently progressed to the next stage of World Beer Awards judging. None went on to receive a global World's Best title in 2026, but having four beers selected as the best in Ireland in their respective categories was an achievement we were extremely proud of.

Great Taste Awards 2026

The Great Taste Awards 2026 brought recognition for another broad cross-section of the brewery, with nine Our Brewery beers receiving Great Taste awards.

Two beers received the highest 3-Star Great Taste rating, one received 2 Stars and six received 1 Star.

3-Star Great Taste Awards

  • Low Land — Oud Bruin / Flemish Brown Ale
  • Séasúr — Mixed Fermentation Saison

2-Star Great Taste Award

  • Terra Nocturne — Imperial Stout

1-Star Great Taste Awards

  • Do You Wanna Funk?
  • In Tension — Rhubarb Saison
  • It's Own Pace — Red Flanders
  • Pressure to Pick — Italian Pilsner
  • Souvenir de Cassis
  • Untamed — Wild Ale V1

The Great Taste results are especially significant for the brewery's longer-term fermentation programme. Low Land and Séasúr both receiving 3 Stars, alongside 2 Stars for Terra Nocturne, provided independent recognition for beers where fermentation, maturation and time play a particularly important role.

Recognition Across the Whole Brewery

Looking at the three competitions together tells a more useful story than simply counting medals.

Pressure to Pick, Modern Love, Do You Wanna Funk? and Hang Up Your Hang Ups are beers from the heart of our core range. Alongside them are beers such as Low Land, Séasúr, Untamed, In Tension, It's Own Pace, Souvenir de Cassis and Terra Nocturne, where different fermentation and maturation techniques allow us to explore another side of brewing.

For a small independent brewery, having both sides of what we do recognised is important. The aim isn't to make unusual beer for the sake of being unusual, or to chase awards with one-off competition beers. It is to make beer we believe in and make it as well as we can.

Building on Our 2025 World's Best Beer Awards

The 2026 results follow an exceptional 2025 for Our Brewery.

At the World Beer Awards 2025, Low Land Oud Bruin and Séasúr Mixed Fermentation Saison both progressed beyond their Ireland wins to be named World's Best in their respective categories.

That distinction is important. Our four World Beer Awards Country Winners in 2026 were Ireland winners; the two global World's Best titles belong to our 2025 results.

Rather than treating those 2025 titles as a destination, we see the continued recognition in 2026 as encouragement to keep doing what we have been doing: learning, improving and giving beers the time they need.

Independent Beer from Randalstown, Northern Ireland

Our Brewery is a small, family-owned and independent brewery in Randalstown, Northern Ireland.

We don't have the scale or marketing budgets of the world's largest breweries. What we can control is what happens inside our own brewery: the ingredients we choose, the processes we use, how we manage fermentation, how long we allow a beer to develop and ultimately whether we believe it is good enough to release.

That philosophy applies whether we're brewing a pilsner that will become part of someone's regular beer choice or looking after a mixed-fermentation beer that may spend years developing before it reaches a bottle.

Our Brewery exists to give people confidence in what they choose to drink — by making beer with judgement, care and time in a world that rushes.

The awards are independent recognition of that work. The beer remains the important part.

Discover Our Brewery

If you'd like to explore the beers behind the awards, visit our Our Beers page to discover our core range alongside barrel-aged, mixed-fermentation and limited releases.

If you're in Northern Ireland, you can also visit the Hidden Brewery Shop at our brewery in Randalstown. It's the place to buy directly from the brewery, discover current releases and explore beers that may not be widely available elsewhere.

Thank you to everyone who has bought a beer, visited the brewery, stocked us, poured our beer, recommended it to someone else or simply taken a chance on an independent brewery from Randalstown.

We appreciate it.