Alameda Brewing Just Won a National Gold Medal for Burma Ale
The Park Street brewery took gold in the Herb and Spice category at the 2026 U.S. Open Beer Championship, a year after a World Beer Cup silver.
By The Alameda Pulse
Alameda Brewing has a national gold medal on the wall. The brewery at 1716 Park Street won gold in the Herb and Spice Beer category at the 2026 U.S. Open Beer Championship for its Burma Ale.
That's a big deal for a neighborhood brewery. The U.S. Open judges beers from across the country and beyond, and winning your category means the judges picked yours first out of everything entered.
It's not a fluke either. Burma Ale also took silver at the 2025 World Beer Cup, in the same category, which is about as close to a world championship as brewing gets. Two medals in two years for one beer.
What makes Burma Ale unusual
Burma Ale is a gruit, which means it's beer brewed without hops.
Hops are in essentially every beer you've ever had. They're what makes an IPA bitter and piney. Brewers have leaned on them for centuries because they add flavor and help beer keep.
A gruit goes back further, to what people brewed before hops took over. Instead of hops, you build the beer on herbs. Alameda Brewing uses chamomile, blue ginger, orange peel, and lemongrass, and the can labels it a Tea Beer, which is a fair description of how it drinks. It's soft and floral where a pale ale would be sharp. At 4.8 percent, it's an afternoon beer, not a project.
So this isn't a beer trying to out-hop the competition. It skips the competition entirely. That's genuinely hard to pull off, because hops do a lot of quiet work in a normal beer, and pulling them out means something else has to carry it. Two medals say the botanicals are carrying it.
Wait, wasn't this Alameda Island Brewing?
It was. The brewery dropped "Island" from the name in its 2024 rebrand, so if you've known it as Alameda Island Brewing for years, same place, same address, shorter name.
Useful timing for a national medal, too. Recognition counts for more while people are still forming an opinion about your new name.
Where to try it
The taproom is at 1716 Park Street, up toward the north end of the Park Street strip near Lincoln.
You can also catch them pouring at Blues, Brews and BBQ at Washington Park on September 20, alongside Drake's and Sierra Nevada. That festival's free, which makes it a low-commitment way to try the beer that just won a national medal.
More on what's opening, closing, and winning awards around the island is on our Alameda events calendar.
