California Brewers Cup Hits Record 1,323 Entries, Morgan Territory Wins Best of Show

Morgan Territory Brewing turned a German-style Heller Bock/Maibock into California’s top beer and walked away with Brewery of the Year, making the Tracy brewery the night’s clearest winner at the 2026 Brewers Cup of California.

The competition handed out Bronze, Silver and Gold across 73 style categories after more than 60 judges worked through 1,323 entries from 203 independent craft breweries. The awards were announced April 24 at The Sofia, Home of B Street Theatre, in Sacramento, in a private ceremony that was livestreamed through The Brewing Network. For a state competition created in 2019 by the Brewers Guilds of California and the California Craft Brewers Association, the scale was a reminder of how much weight this event now carries in the California market.

Morgan Territory’s Best of Show beer, Lock’d, Bock’d And Ready To Rock, stood out for doing something many brewers chase but few execute at this level: winning the state’s biggest stage with a lager-style beer rather than a hop bomb. The brewery’s repeat success made the result even sharper. Morgan Territory also won Brewery of the Year in 2023 and 2025, giving the Tracy operation three top brewery titles in four years and turning it into one of the state’s most consistently decorated competitors.

The style results pointed to a familiar California split between precision and power. Moksa Brewing Company won gold in Hazy India Pale Ale with Zeta Function, while Morgan Territory took gold in American/West Coast IPAs with Tropidank. Those wins show that hazy and West Coast IPA remain the most crowded, commercially important battlegrounds in the state, even as a cleanly brewed Maibock could still cut through the field and take the grand prize. That balance is exactly why these results matter to homebrewers watching for where judges are rewarding technical execution, bitterness control and clean lager character.

The rest of the top honors reinforced the competition’s industry pull. The Los Angeles County Brewers Guild earned Guild of the Year, and North Coast Brewing Company co-founder and president Mark Ruedrich was named the 2026 Craft Beer Pioneer. Sacramento Area Brewers Guild president David Weiss called the event “a celebration by independent breweries for independent breweries,” a description that fit a competition built to reward peers as much as it crowns winners. With Sacramento Beer Week running April 24 through May 3, the Brewers Cup landed at the center of a 10-day stretch that kept California beer in the spotlight.