This Ohio IPA is the best in the world, according to the 2023 World Beer Cup

While Columbus boasts a healthy craft beer scene, according to this year’s World Beer Cup, one Cleveland-area brewery has the best IPA in the world.

Fat Head’s Brewery, the long-standing beer-maker from Middleburg Heights, learned yesterday that its flagship beer, Head Hunter IPA, took home the gold medal in the American-style IPA category at the 2023 World Beer Cup.

The World Beer Cup, a bi-annual event that fielded entrants this year from more than 2,300 breweries from 51 countries, features more than 100 categories. None are more sought-after and none are more competitive than the American IPA however.

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This year, the American IPA category was the most-entered category in the event, with over 400 entrants.

“Best. In. The. World!!! The verdict is in at this year’s World Beer Cup: Head Hunter IPA wins GOLD,” a statement posted to Fat Head’s Instagram account reads. 

This year’s silver medal went to Applied Science from Sunriver Brewing Co. in Bend, Oregon, and the bronze medal went to Old West from Craft Coast Beer & Tacos in Oceanside, California.

Head Hunter IPA is a stalwart in the craft beer world. The beer, which has been brewed since 2009, took home a silver medal in 2010 and a bronze medal in 2011 from the Great American Beer Festival, in addition to consecutive silver medals from the World Beer Cup in 2012 and 2014.

While newer IPAs often have an edge in the category, given many of the current hop varietals didn’t exist at the time older examples of the styles were brewed, the Ohio-born IPA managed to come out on top anyway.

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