QUAFF wins America’s Finest City Homebrew Competition again
QUAFF swept America’s Finest City again, and its own members powered the contest they were judged in, from 598 entries to a 216.19 club score.
QUAFF did more than win America’s Finest City Homebrew Competition again. It helped build the machine that produced the result, then used that machine to dominate it.
The San Diego club, the Quality Ale and Fermentation Fraternity, finished atop AFC 2026 with an overall score of 216.19, far ahead of Ace Brewing Society at 36.02 and Arizona Society of Homebrewers at 34.03. The scale was striking: 598 entries, 189 registered participants, judges and stewards, and a field that made AFC 2026 the largest annual homebrew competition in Southern California.
That kind of margin points to more than a strong harvest of recipes. QUAFF has run AFC since 1992, and the event has been part of its club culture for decades. Founded in 1989, the club says it now has about 250 active members and that the competition sits inside the Master Homebrewer Program Circuit of America, the California Homebrewers Circuit and the California Homebrewers Association Club of the Year circuit. AFC also has a process built for serious judging, with roughly 50 BJCP-ranked judges in recent years, including Grand Master+, Master, National and Certified judges, plus cider and mead judges. Entries are limited to two bottles apiece, and medals go to first, second and third place at each table, with a minimum score of 25 required to medal in 2025.
That structure helps explain why QUAFF keeps showing up at the top. The club is not just chasing medals from the outside. Its members are also the ones putting the tables together, calibrating the competition and living inside the same standards they ask everyone else to meet. In a hobby that depends on feedback, that loop matters: club members can test recipes, compare notes, and carry lessons from one batch to the next in the same place where those beers are ultimately measured.
Benjamin Frymark was the breakout name of the day, finishing first among 126 participating homebrewers and earning Brew Machine honors for 2026 after 11 top-three finishes across styles including Brown British Beer, Dark European Lager and Specialty Beer. John Bell and Doug Brown also turned in multiple first-place finishes and stayed in the best-of-show conversation, the kind of breadth that suggests QUAFF’s bench is as important as its headline names.
The club’s sweep touched beer, mead and cider. Brent Krohn won Beer Best of Show with an Irish Red Ale, with Bell second for a Belgian Tripel. Alexandria Perry took Mead/Cider Best of Show with a pyment, while Brown’s braggot placed second. QUAFF also swept International Lager, Monastic Ale and Melomel, even as local homebrewers missed the IPA podiums entirely and Eli Palma settled for an honorable mention in American IPA.
That mix is the real story behind the repeat win. QUAFF did not just outscore the field. It showed how a club, over years of judging prep, recipe iteration and peer-to-peer mentorship, can turn a homebrew competition into a feedback engine, and then keep cashing in on the lessons it teaches.
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