Long Beach brewers win awards for making some of the best beer in the U.S.

Three Long Beach breweries took home hardware for beer excellence at this year’s Great American Beer Festival.

Trademark Brewing won a gold and a silver medal, Ambitious Ales won a gold medal and ISM Brewing won a bronze medal at the prestigious yearly event in Denver featuring entries from over 500 breweries.

Trademark Brewing co-owner Sterling Steffen said he was watching the awards ceremony Saturday at home on his laptop.

When he heard the brewery’s name called for the gold medal in the highly competitive West Coast IPA category for its Codebreaker IPA, he ran screaming and hugged his wife and co-owner, Ilana, alarming their two young children and dog.

The celebration began when they reassured everyone in the household that the screaming was for a good reason, he said.

“We’re on the map; we’re making great beer,” Sterling said. “The best West Coast IPA is being made in Long Beach, two miles from the ocean.”

Trademark’s head brewer, Kane Christensen, was there in Denver to accept the awards, which also included a silver in the American Fruit Beer category for the brewery’s Mexican lager A La Playa.

Trademark celebrated its five-year anniversary this summer at its location on Anaheim Street just west of Long Beach Boulevard.

Two of the five founders of Ambitious Ales, which opened five years ago in Bixby Knolls , attended the festival this year in Denver.

Garrett Carroll and Jerome de Leon said they were growing discouraged as the two-hour awards ceremony progressed Saturday.

When they heard their beer Professional Human Being called out for the gold medal in the final category of juicy or hazy IPA, “we lost our minds,” Carroll said.

Those two Long Beach breweries’ dominance in the IPA category got them a mention in Forbes.

Ambitious Ales is currently tapped out of their award-winning double dry hopped beer, but a fresh batch will be arriving on Oct. 28.

The name for their award-winning beer — Professional Human Being — came from an inside joke among the five founders when they were hanging out and honing their brewing craft over a decade ago, said one of the founders Juan Carrillo.

ISM Brewing, located on the Promenade in Downtown Long Beach, was awarded bronze for Plough & Harrow in the saison category. The brewery also got bronze for the same beer during April’s World Beer Cup.

“It’s been a pretty stellar year,” said Ian McCall, owner of the brewery that opened last November.

To celebrate its first year in Long Beach, ISM is launching a new food menu featuring four different types of pickled eggs — “LB Caviar” as McCall termed it — along with loaded fries, a smoked chicken Banh Mi sandwich and a mushroom jerk chicken sandwich.

Everywhere Beer Company, headquartered in Orange, won brewery and brewer of the year in the 1,001-2,000 barrels category.

They are opening up a Long Beach location on Fourth Street between St. Louis and Dawson avenues.

Rounding out the award winners with Long Beach connections, Beachwood Brewing won a silver medal in the scotch ale category for its Full Malted Jacket.

Beachwood moved its brewing production to Huntington Beach in 2023, selling its Downtown location to McCall so he could open ISM Brewing.

Beachwood has taprooms at 2nd & PCH and in Bixby Knolls.

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