A pilsner brewed by a Minneapolis brewery took home the top German-style pilsner or “pilsener” award at the World Beer Cup last week in Indianapolis.
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A pilsner brewed by a Minneapolis brewery took home the top German-style pilsner or “pilsener” award at the World Beer Cup last week in Indianapolis.
The gold medal beer is called Haha Pils and is brewed by Arbeiter Brewing Co. in Minneapolis. Not only did the beer beat out 185 other German-style pilsners submitted by breweries across the globe, but this is the second major award the brewery has won for the beer in the last seven months. Back in October, Haha Pils also took home gold at the Great American Beer Festival. This means the beer had a clean sweep of the two most prestigious beer festivals in the U.S., and arguably the world.
“We’re bouncing around the room with excitement!” the brewery posted on Instagram. “HaHa Pils went back-to-back with 2024 GABF Gold and yesterday with a World Beer Cup Gold. A feat near impossible, maybe a first?”
The brewery added, “A German Pilsener can be a style of beer that is difficult to produce and recreate at such a high-level. It’s a crisp and delicate beer that leaves nothing for off-flavors to hide behind.”
The silver German-style pilsner award went to Hi-Wire Lager brewed by Hi-Wire Brewing in Asheville, North Carolina, and bronze went to Icicle Premium Pilsner from Icicle Brewing Co. in Leavenworth, Washington.
The World Beer Cup is run by the Brewers Association, a not-for-profit trade association representing American independent craft brewers. This year, a panel of 265 judges from 37 countries assessed 8,375 beers and ciders in more than 300 categories submitted by producers from 49 countries. Three medals — gold, silver and bronze — are generally awarded in each category, though judges have the ability to withhold medals if the entries don’t meet their standards, and that happened in two instances this year.
Pilsners have seen increasing popularity at this and other beer competitions in recent years. Pilsners are sometimes known as a brewer’s handshake because they’re seen as one of the purest examples of a brewer’s skill. Pilsner is also the style that beer makers tend to order first when they arrive at a new brewery.
The German-style pilsner category had nearly 200 entrants at this year’s World Beer Cup and was the most popular pilsner category. There were, however, several other pilsner categories that also received hundreds of entrants. Other pilsner gold medal winners at the 2025 World Beer Cup include Victor 23 from Portland, Oregon, for its Birkebeinerpil, an international-style pilsner; Russian River Brewing Co. from Windsor, California, for its STS PIls, an Italian-style pilsner; Yokohama Bay Brewing Co. from Yokohama, Japan, for Bay Pilsner, a Bohemian-style pilsner; and Roadhouse Brewing from Jackson, Wyoming, for Highwayman, an American-style pilsner.
Though some of these award-winning breweries have larger distribution, many do not, making it difficult for fans to sample these beers unless they live in the brewery’s local area. However, the World Beer Cup winners page allows users to search by state, and medal-winning beers can be found from many states. So even though a pilsner fan might not be able to try the world’s best pilsner, they should be able to sample a World Beer Cup medal-winning beer.
