pFriem Family Brewers takes gold at Brussels Beer Challenge 2025

pFriem founder Josh pFriem pouring the Helles lager that won a gold medal at the BRUSSELS BEER CHALLENGE 2025. Other medals received by pFriem Family Brewers include:🥈Silver - Pale;🥈Silver - Fruited Spontanée; 🥉Bronze - West Coast IPA

Photos courtesy pFriem Family Brewing

By Kirby Neumann-Rea For Columbia Gorge News, December 29, 2025

Hood River’s pFriem Family Brewing, a Belgian-leaning operation since its start 14 years ago, took several honors at the Brussels Beer Challenge in Belgium last November.

pFriem won a gold medal in the Helles category for its lager, a silver in the American Pale Ale category, and a bronze for its West Coast IPA in the Pacific IPA category.

The brewery’s Fruited Spontanee won silver in the old-style Lambic flavored beer category in the Nov. 3-5 event featuring 1,800 beers from around the world.

“There were a lot of German beers entered, and ours is a beer we are proud of so it felt really good to win,” said pFriem founder Josh Pfriem.

As an annual beer, the spontanee is available at pFriem pubs, for the time being. The helles, pale and West Coast beers are in the waterfront brewery’s standard rotation. 

Pfriem said that what made the medal special was meeting or beating the Belgians at their specialty. 

“The fun part of the Brussels award is (the pFriem beer) was sandwiched between two notable lambic producers; it’s always the Belgians that win that category,” Pfriem said. “Spontanee is essentially a gueuze, but we can’t call it that, only Belgians can call their beers a gueuze, so out of respect to those guys we call it a spontanee. It is blended and cellared in the same manner as a gueuze, using a blend of heavy raspberries and some cherries,” Pfriem said.

“These guys (Belgians) have been doing it for hundreds of years now,” Pfriem said. 

U.S. breweries won 37 medals at the Challenge, up from 19 last year.

The Brussels honors cap a medal-filled year for the brewery. It won mid-sized brewery of the year at the Oregon Beer Awards and two golds and a silver at the World Beer Cup, including a gold for its Cold IPA in the largest of the contest’s categories. It had a big year at the Great American Beer Festival, taking three medals, including Golds for its Spontanee in the Belgian Ale category.

Pfriem won a gold for its Mexican lager at the European Beer Star contest in Germany, and 

Beating the Germans at their game was another bonus.

“We twice medaled at Beerstar, the first non-German or non-Austrian that’s medaled,” Pfriem said. “In the same way, it was pretty fun to win a gueuze category.”